Another Man's Daughter
by no name please39
Summary: "She's not mine. She's his daughter, the Time Lord's daughter, and I've got no right to have her here." After an accident, Jenny is stranded in the parallel universe with the human Doctor. The Doctor lost her once, and he doesn't plan on letting that happen again. But with a mysterious entity kidnapping children all over the world, he may not have a choice.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note:** Hello, all! This is my first fanfiction in years, and my very first Doctor Who fic, so if you have ANY feedback, please share! I'm always open to constructive criticism!

Special thanks to CoriOreo, my fantastic beta reader :)

**Disclaimer:** Doctor Who and everything related to it belongs to the BBC. I'm merely borrowing the characters for creative purposes. Katherine and Miranda Tyler-Smith, however, belong to me.

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It was incredibly quiet. Almost too quiet, but the Doctor wouldn't allow that thought to cross his mind. To say "it was too quiet" was akin to saying "nothing could possibly go wrong" or "no turning back now." Those days were, for the most part, long gone, or at least they would be until he could get the TARDIS to grow. As much as he missed the traveling, he certainly didn't want any of that to come back on tonight of all nights.

He had just spent the last forty-five minutes trying to get two children, both under the age of four, to sleep for the night. If any intergalactic creature decided to wreak havoc on London tonight, the kids would undoubtedly wake up. And if they did, well, said intergalactic creature would be at the mercy of the Bad Wolf and the Oncoming Storm: two extraordinarily tired parents who _would not_ allow anything to stand between them and a good night's sleep for once.

The Doctor closed the bedroom door as quietly as he could, cringing as the door clicked shut. Even the tiniest noise could wake up the baby. He supposed that all infants were difficult around bedtime, but Miranda was an exceptionally light sleeper. At two months old, she seemed genuinely incapable of sleeping through the night. Surely that wasn't normal. After nearly six years of being half-human, the Doctor knew how much sleep the human body demanded. He didn't need as much as the average human (four, maybe five hours a night usually did the trick), but he had lived amongst them long enough to know that this was considered abnormal on his part. Maybe Miranda had inherited more of his Gallifreyan physiology than they had originally thought—it would explain a lot.

He stood perfectly still outside the nursery door, his forehead lightly resting on the cool wood. _Please, please, please, please, don't wake up,_ he thought, closing his eyes in anticipation for the usual cry of protest. But fifteen seconds of silence passed, and the Doctor slowly exhaled in disbelief. Good. Maybe for once he could go straight to bed without having to spend another twenty minutes rocking her back to sleep…

Still, he tiptoed down the hall, taking care to avoid the creaky floorboard in front of the second bedroom. Rose had put their older daughter to bed a little while earlier, and apparently it had taken several picture books to put her to sleep tonight. Stories were one of the very, very few things that three-year-old Katherine would sit still for. If not for the picture books, Katherine would still be bouncing up the wall and endlessly begging for "two more minutes" of playtime.

It was quiet. Miranda wasn't crying, and Katherine wasn't calling out for attention. So far, so good, but one could never be too safe. Though he never believed in superstitions, the Doctor gently rapped his knuckles on the wooden door of a nearby closet. He was too bloody tired to take any chances tonight.

He quietly turned the knob to his own bedroom door and slipped inside. Holding his breath, he gently closed the door behind him, and paused. Nothing but beautiful, wonderful silence. "Rose," he called in a stage whisper, "Rose, I've done it! Miranda's sleeping! They both are!"

Rose emerged from their private bathroom, clad in pink cotton pants and a souvenir t-shirt from Barcelona (the city, not the planet). She leaned on the doorframe, mouth coated in green foam as she brushed her teeth. "Both of them?" she asked, voice muffled by the toothpaste.

"Both of them!" The Doctor said, a grin splitting across his face. He knew that he was irrationally happy about this, but he didn't care. He'd beaten Daleks, Cybermen, Gelth, Slitheen, Weeping Angels—but getting his daughters to bed at a reasonable hour? Now _that_ was what he called a victory.

Rose disappeared into the bathroom, and the Doctor heard her turn on the water and spit out the toothpaste. "Here's to a decent sleep," she said.

The Doctor began unbuttoning his work shirt, noting a small spot of ketchup on the sleeve as he shrugged it off. He crumpled it into a ball before tossing it into the hamper like a basketball, but the shirt missed its target and fell to the floor. He frowned and crossed the room to retrieve it.

"Sorry," he murmured, nearly bumping into Rose as she emerged from the bathroom.

"S' fine," she replied, her voice dripping with exhaustion as she wound her hair into a ponytail. It was darker now, almost honey-colored. After Katherine was born, Rose had given up on maintaining her roots and allowed her hair to revert to its natural color. With two small children and a job with Torchwood, the color of her hair had simply fallen off her list of priorities.

Not that the Doctor minded. He always thought that Rose was lovely, whether she was blonde or brunette or somewhere in between. But he would be lying if he said he didn't appreciate the darker color. Somehow, this new shade suited Rose, and he never once complained about it. She was certainly happier in knowing that she didn't have to watch her roots anymore, and if Rose was happy, then the Doctor was happy.

He took a moment to study Rose as he changed into flannel pajama bottoms. She was undressing the bed, pushing off piles of laundry and folding back the duvet. Her face was scrubbed clean of makeup, her hair was a mess, and her pajama pants were too short after going through the dryer one too many times. She never looked as lovely as she did at this time of night. With nobody to impress, no image to project, Rose Tyler-Smith was at her most beautiful.

Rose climbed onto the mattress and slid under the covers. She looked up at him as she switched on the baby monitor. "What?" she said.

The Doctor blinked and realized that he had stared at Rose for a moment too long to remain inconspicuous. He cleared his throat and pulled a gray t-shirt over his head. "Just thinking," he said innocently. He yawned into his elbow and walked to his side of the bed.

"What about?" Rose asked, smiling while she stretched her arms over her head. "Not thinking about modifying our appliances, I hope?"

"Oi! I promised I wouldn't touch anything else, didn't I?" The Doctor pulled back the sheets and crawled into bed.

"I saw you eyeing the toaster this morning," Rose's tongue was just starting to poke between her teeth. "I know you think about it."

"I'm telling you, Rose, there is something wrong with that contraption. It is incapable of making an edible piece of toast—it's either burnt or not cooked at all…did I tell you, just this morning, I bit into a _raw_ piece of bread? Fresh out of the toaster, and it was just…_warm, floppy bread_. It's not natural. Nothing a little sonic screwdriver couldn't fix…."

"After the incident with the coffee pot, I think not."

"It was _five years ago_!"

"Shh," Rose exclaimed, pressing a finger to his lips. She glanced over her shoulder towards the bedroom door. "Let's make sure the girls stay asleep tonight, yeah?"

The Doctor exhaled and listened, wishing that the metacrisis hasn't wiped out his telepathic nature. Things would be so much easier if he could simply project relaxing, sleep-inducing thoughts into the children's minds. But no, he was almost completely devoid of telepathy. It was one of the things he genuinely missed about being a full Time Lord, if only because it never occurred to him how wonderfully convenient such abilities would be when it came to fussy babies. Apparently that wasn't an uncommon trait when it came to the Tyler children—Tony had been almost as bad as Miranda when he was small.

The house remained silent. Once satisfied that the girls were asleep, the Doctor reached to his right and turned off his lamp. Rose did the same and the room was plunged into darkness, with only the faintest traces of moonlight peaking through the drawn curtains across the room.

They assumed their usual sleeping position: Rose rolled onto her right side, and the Doctor curled up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist. Although she'd managed to shed most of the weight from her last pregnancy, a few pounds stubbornly remained around her stomach. It was something that Rose had been very touchy about as of late, but the Doctor didn't mind. If anything, he liked the way her post-pregnancy body felt against his. It was a reminder of the life that he led with her, a reminder of the two children that she had carried. Despite their maddening sleeping patterns, Katherine and Miranda were perfect. The Doctor couldn't imagine existing without them. They were so very young, so fragile and so _human_, but in their short lives they had managed to work their way into his single heart in ways he couldn't explain. It had been so long since he lost his children that he'd nearly forgotten what it was like to truly be a father—or rather, he'd nearly forgotten what it was like to be a _dad_.

Sometimes he regretted Rose's decision not to have any more children, but he didn't blame her in the least, not after the disaster that was her last pregnancy. It was bad enough to watch, and the Doctor couldn't even begin to think about how awful it must have been to go through it firsthand. She was sick as a dog from the get-go, unable to keep an ounce food down. During the worst of it, she wasn't even able to drink water without vomiting, and had to be hospitalized three times for dehydration. In all his nine hundred years, the Doctor had never felt so helpless. The whole nine months were nothing short of hellish, and as soon as Miranda was born, Rose insisted on getting her tubes tied.

The Doctor couldn't argue with her. He'd felt guilty enough for putting her through the last pregnancy to begin with and never wanted to see her that miserable again. But they still had two daughters, and that was enough for them, even though it meant the Doctor was doomed to a lifetime of being outnumbered by Tyler women.

The Doctor pulled Rose towards him until her back was pressed to his front. They'd always curled up in bed like this. He supposed that they were equally afraid of waking up the next morning to find that this was all a mad, impossible dream. Their fears were unfounded, of course, but every so often, one of them would wake up from a too-vivid nightmare, desperate for physical contact to prove that everything was real.

Rose nudged the pillows until she had carved a small chasm to fit her head, and the Doctor laced his fingers with her own. He inhaled the scent of strawberry shampoo, laundry detergent, and something else that was uniquely _Rose_. He never tired of it.

"Your hands are freezing," Rose complained.

"Sorry." The Doctor moved to withdraw his hands, but Rose held them tightly. With a small smile, he kissed the dip between her neck and shoulder.

This was why he wanted the kids to go to sleep without a fuss. As much as he positively adored his children, there have been many occasions when he wanted to drop them off at daycare indefinitely to have Rose's undivided attention. Before children, it was just the two of them in a comfortable one-bedroom flat. They could watch whatever movies they wanted, they could get Chinese takeaway four times a week if they wanted, and they could shag on the kitchen counter whenever it struck their fancy.

After having children, it was the four of them in a big, cluttered house. The telly was always tuned into an educational children's show, balanced meals were of utmost importance, and it was impossible to even _kiss_ for a full minute without the telltale chime of Rose's mobile that would inevitably summon her to the Torchwood headquarters. Or, worse yet, the ever-present cry of "Mummy! Daddy! Come here, look at me!"

The Doctor loved his children. But he also loved Rose, and their lack of intimacy wasn't doing them any favors. They would try to make plans, though they seldom worked out. Just last week, the Doctor was in the middle of cooking spaghetti when Rose walked into the kitchen. She had stood behind him, arms wrapped around his waist and her chin resting in the dip of his shoulder. "Meet me in the bedroom after they're asleep," she had whispered in his ear, far too softly for anyone else to notice. Then she reached into a nearby cabinet, withdrew the dishes, and shot him a cheeky smile before leaving to set the table for dinner.

One of the weaknesses (or strengths, depending on how he looked at it) of this human body was just how incredibly hormonal it was, and the Doctor had learned _very_ quickly that even a mildly suggestive smile from Rose could set him off. After that particular incident, the Doctor had been caught off guard and nearly dropped the strainer. Quite a juvenile response, really, but the Doctor couldn't bring himself to care. For the rest of the evening he kept watching the clock, wishing fervently that he had the TARDIS at his disposal.

Of course, later on Katherine had woken up with a stomach virus. They had spent most of the night in the bathroom, mopping up Katherine's tears and holding her hair as she vomited into the toilet. Needless to say, Rose's plans never came to fruition.

To their relief, it turned out to be a twenty-four-hour bug, and Katherine slept peacefully the next night. But Miranda had woken up three times, wailing her tiny lungs out, demanding to be fed. Rose had ultimately brought Miranda into their bed, simultaneously sleeping and breastfeeding. The Doctor had been exhausted from work that day, and the baby's constant crying only made him grumpy. By the end of the week, both were too tired to cash in on their nightly one-on-one time. They had passed out upon contact with the mattress. It was one of the only times that the entire Tyler-Smith family slept a full eight hours uninterrupted.

That was another thing that the Doctor had learned about human parenting: sleep had become invaluable. He was still part Time Lord, and as such required less rest than the rest of his family. All the same, fatherhood was quite grueling. The girls were, for the most part, wonderfully well behaved, but they could certainly be a handful. Miranda was a colicky baby and a mama's girl to boot; nine times out of ten, the Doctor was forced to hand her off to Rose in desperation.

Katherine, though, was another story entirely. Considering that he was living on the slow path now (or at least he would be, until the TARDIS was done growing in their modified attic), the Doctor couldn't believe how quickly she'd grown up. She was three years old now and had an insatiable sense of curiosity. Everywhere they went, Katherine would spout an endless stream of questions: "Daddy, why do birdies fly? Why's that flower yellow? How come 'Randa has no hair like us? Why do I have two feets, not four like cats? Why, Daddy? Why?"

Perhaps her curiosity streak came with being one-quarter Gallifreyan. She certainly inherited the bulk of her physical appearance from the Doctor. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that she inherited her personality from him as well.

Every day, without fail, she would greet him in the foyer after work with a hug, a detailed account of her afternoon, and a request for playtime. Regardless of what sort of day it had been, the Doctor could never turn her down. According to Jackie Tyler, it was only a matter of time before Katherine turned into a teenager and wanted nothing to do with him; he ought to enjoy her affection and youthful exuberance before it was too late.

But no matter how much he loved her, in spite of the fact that Katherine was the center of his universe (alongside her mother and baby sister, of course), she could certainly try his patience at bedtime. All she wanted to do was play, and as she had pointed out numerous times, you can't play while you're sleeping. Unless Rose was in charge, most nights were spent negotiating with her: she could stay up for two more minutes _only_ if she spent them reading a book. Two pictures books later, she insisted that he complete the "two-hugs-two-kisses-check-under-the-bed-for-monst ers" routine. The Doctor knew perfectly well that Katherine didn't believe in monsters, but he indulged her if it meant she would go to sleep without too much trouble.

The Doctor was roused from his thoughts by a small creak outside their door.

He squeezed his eyes closed and buried his face in the pillow. _Not now, not tonight, I just got you to sleep,_ he thought. If he had heard correctly—and he was quite sure he did, seeing as he _did_ have superior Time Lord physiology, albeit a diluted version of it—then Katherine was awake and puttering about, no doubt ready to sheepishly call for them while standing in the hallway.

Well, at least it was Katherine who was awake, and not Miranda. He stood a chance at getting his elder daughter back to sleep if she chose to wake up. Miranda was difficult—a right little princess she was, operating on her own schedule regardless of what everybody else said. If she decided to wake up, then by God she would stay awake. The Doctor positively adored her, especially now that she looked like a miniature version of her mother, but he had to admit that Miranda had an impressive set of lungs. Sleeping through her cries was never an option.

The Doctor listened for another creak that would indicate the presence of a small child. "Did you hear that?" he said into Rose's hair, his words heavily garbled by fatigue.

"Hmm," Rose moaned, shifting slightly, "'S the house settlin.'"

The Doctor reluctantly lifted his head, listening intently. He waited for the inevitable plea for permission to snuggle with them in bed, but instead he heard nothing. Strange.

"I heard something," the Doctor whispered incredulously.

Rose shifted again to look at him. "It's the house," she said. "She's asleep, Doctor, she'd have said something by now."

The Doctor sighed and put his head down. "Quite right," he murmured. He breathed deeply and adjusted his arm. He knew he should be getting some sleep, and even this human-Time Lord body was begging for some rest, but his mind was alert now. Katherine might be in bed, but that could easily change.

He kept shifting his position, trying to quell his restless mind, but it was useless. As tired as he was, his thoughts were working at a mile a minute: he thought of Katherine and how they had to sign her up for preschool soon, which drifted into thoughts of how they would manage to get her to preschool with their work schedules, which led to thoughts of the papers he needed to grade and hand back to his students by next week, which led to thoughts of the lab practical he had to outline, which led to thoughts of more papers to grade, and so on and so forth.

"What are you doing?" Rose grumbled, untangling herself from his arms. "You're keeping me up."

The Doctor opened his eyes and frowned. "Sorry," he apologized quietly, reaching for her again. He hated falling asleep without her in his arms; even after six years in this universe, a small part of him needed to know that she was still here.

Rose flopped onto her back, rubbing her hands over her face. She turned her head to face him, blinking expectantly. "Can't sleep again?" she asked.

The Doctor managed a halfhearted shrug despite his awkward position. "Thought I heard something. Woke me up, I suppose."

Rose closed her eyes. "Hearing things now? You'd better not go barmy on me."

"And why would I do a thing like that?"

"Because there's a fine line between brilliance and madness, and you treat it like a tightrope."

"For your information, I am fantastically brilliant, Rose Tyler. There is, in fact, a method to my madness."

"Like the method you used when you decided to sonic the coffee pot?"

The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "Again with the coffee pot! Are you ever going to let that go? How was I to know that coffee pots are calibrated differently in this universe?"

Rose's grin was vibrant even in the dark. "Absentminded professor, you are. I wonder what your students must think of you."

"They _also_ think that I'm fantastically brilliant. Look at me."

She opened her mouth to respond, but a faint murmur from the baby monitor interrupted her. Her body stiffened as she closed her eyes. "Please, _please_, not tonight, Miranda…"

The Doctor shared the sentiment, but he kept quiet about it. Instead, his lips drew into a fine line as he raised his head to look at the baby monitor. Another murmur, louder this time. He groaned and collapsed onto the bed, half of his face pressed into the pillow. _You've _got_ to be kidding _me, he thought. She'd only been asleep for—the Doctor quickly calculated the time, a skill that had thankfully _not_ disappeared with the metacrisis—twenty-five minutes and fourty-eight seconds, for goodness' sake.

He wouldn't get up. Babies had to learn that crying didn't automatically equate to attention. Right? It would spoil them. Miranda was, evidently, demanding by nature; it wouldn't do to spoil her. Still, just to be on the safe side, he quickly went through his memories to make sure that her needs were covered for the night. Rose had fed and burped her earlier in the evening. The Doctor had changed her nappy and put her in clean jimjams. He'd left the window open and the ceiling fan on to combat the hot summer air. He'd rocked her for fifteen minutes like they did every night. Right, then. There was absolutely no reason why she should be crying. She just wanted attention.

He wouldn't get up. He needed to _sleep_.

The whimpering from the baby monitor was steadily increasing. Rose stared at it with a conflicted expression, one hand pressed to her forehead. Together they focused on the monitor, silently willing the baby to _go to sleep just this once_.

A few minutes had passed before the whimpers began to morph into full-fledged cries (the "I'm-bored-pay-attention-to-me" sort, rather than the "I'm-starving-feed-me" or "I'm-in-pain-fix-it-now" sort. The Doctor had learned the difference with great difficulty when Katherine was a newborn). He closed his eyes against his daughter's impressive wailing and exhaled in frustration. Honestly, they'd kept her naps exceptionally short this afternoon in order to _prevent_ this. He made a mental note to run further analysis on Miranda's genetic makeup. Surely this was the Gallifreyan DNA acting up, it was the only logical explanation for her chronic insomnia.

But that was a matter to attend to tomorrow. He would leave her be for now. He _would not spoil her_.

He opened one eye to look at Rose. She was intently studying the ceiling, lips pursed. Somehow the darkened room brought out the circles under her eyes. _Oh, Rose,_ he thought, a familiar rush of guilt working its way through his system. Here he was, not even a proper human and complaining about a lack of sleep. And then there was Rose, a Torchwood field agent who returned home to a colicky newborn and a three-year-old whose energy knew no bounds. Still, she took it in stride, squaring her shoulders and rarely verbalizing her complaints. She not only did her job, but she did it _well_. Extraordinarily so, in fact.

If anyone deserved a break, it was her. And a crying baby wouldn't do anything to remedy the situation at hand.

"I've got her," the Doctor murmured, pressing a quick kiss to Rose's temple before swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. He reached for his glasses and slid them on. Farsightedness was another unfortunate side effect of being part human, apparently.

"Doctor," Rose began sternly. Her brow furrowed as she propped herself up on her elbows. "You've got work in the morning."

He wrinkled his nose, more a reflex than anything else. He didn't mind having a job, per say, but a person could teach physics to a lecture hall of halfway-interested students only so many times before it got old. Could've been worse, but still. He pushed away all thoughts of lectures and lab practicals in order to focus on the matter at hand. Shaking his head, reached for the dressing gown thrown haphazardly over a chair and shrugged it on. "Rose," he said, no longer bothering with the whispering, "It's _fine_. Honestly, it's fine. Get some sleep. Please?"

He probably laid it on a little thick with the pleading, but he knew that Rose would protest. Better try to minimize the problem before it started. But Rose was already throwing back the duvet. "Nope," she said. "I'm already up, anyway, might as well."

"_You've_ got work too, you know."

"So? Hasn't stopped me before."

"Rose."

"Doctor, I've got her. _It's fine_."

The Doctor was opening his mouth to object, but a miniscule movement in the corner of his eye distracted him. Nine centuries of instinct kicked in, and he immediately whirled around to face the bedroom door. His hand impulsively twitched towards his pocket, where he normally kept his sonic. But when the threat revealed itself, he groaned at his own stupidity and glared at the ceiling. Dear god, he really needed to get some sleep.

"Mummy?" A decidedly non-threatening voice drifted into the bedroom. The door creaked open as Katherine stepped into the room, sleepily rubbing her eyes. Her dark hair was sticking up in several directions and she was missing a sock.

"Well, that solves _that_ problem," Rose murmured under her breath. She scooped the toddler into her arms. "What're you doing up? You should be asleep."

"'Randa," Katherine said, nose wrinkled in distain.

"Miranda woke you up?" Rose said. She was using the "mum voice" again, the voice she used when she was dealing with unhappy children. When Katherine nodded in reply, Rose gave her a quick squeeze. "All right. I'm going to get her now, and Daddy will put you to bed, yeah?"

Katherine nodded again and wordlessly reached for the Doctor. He stepped forward and gathered his daughter into his arms. She latched onto him like a small octopus, her head dropping into the crook of his shoulder. "Come on, let's get you back to sleep, Kit-Kat," he said into her hair, waiting for Rose to pass before making his way down the hall.

By the time he reached Katherine's bedroom, she was gripping the fabric of his t-shirt and her eyes were flickering in all directions. The Doctor raised an eyebrow and did a quick survey of the room. Aside from the perpetual mess of books in the corner, everything was in its place. "Everything all right?" he asked, pausing at the foot of the bed. Moonlight poured over the Disney-themed duvet from the open window.

Katherine looked at him, brown eyes wide and questioning, with a hint of _something_ that the Doctor couldn't quite place. Less than fear, but more than simple unease. "Did you have a bad dream?" he asked. He knew that he probably sounded a touch less sympathetic than he should have, but _bloody hell_ he needed to go to bed.

Her gaze flickered towards the window above the bed. "Mummy stops bad aliens, right?" she asked. Ah, that was better—her tone was far more lighthearted than the Doctor had expected.

"That she does," he said. There was far more to it, obviously, but a three-year-old could only comprehend so much about Torchwood. Katherine nodded once but kept glancing towards the window. Well, at least there was more curiosity than anxiety in her eyes now, but the Doctor knew better than to let this slide. "What's this about, eh?" He gently bounced her, partly to adjust his grip on her but primarily to chase away the thoughts that bothered her.

Katherine's face split into a fleeting grin. _Mission accomplished_. "I dreamed—I dreamed about aliens," she announced, turning in the Doctor's arms to face him. "They were bad 'cause they got in from the windows an' took _everyone_ away!"

"Everyone?" the Doctor repeated, raising his eyebrows to indulge her. "What happened, then?"

"Mummy an' you stopped them," Katherine said nonchalantly. "'Cause—'cause the bad aliens got 'Randa and me an' kept us in jail. But 'Randa was bigger than me. She was a lady like Mummy."

The Doctor smiled at her account of the dream. He bent down to put her back into bed, and as soon as she was settled, he pulled the blanket loosely around her waist and tucked her in. "Well," he said, dragging out the vowel, "That's a bit silly, don't you think?"

"I dunno."

He paused, frowning as he looked at his daughter. '_I dunno?'_ She didn't honestly think that the dream was a possibility, did she? To be fair, she was only three, but still…He sat on the edge of the bed. "What do you mean, 'you don't know?'" he said, keeping his tone light. "I think it's _very_ silly. Extremely silly, in fact, probably the silliest thing I've ever heard in my life. Do you know why?"

Katherine shook her head eagerly.

"Because Mummy and I are _never_ going to let that happen." The Doctor reached for Beau, a plush lamb and relic from Katherine's infancy, and tucked it under her arm. Katherine clutched the toy to her chest and smiled.

"It's a dream, right?" Katherine said as she buried half of her face into the lamb's faded wool.

"Just a dream." The Doctor kissed her forehead and stood up. "See you in the morning, Kit-Kat."

After redoing the "two-hugs-two-kisses-check-for-monsters-under-the- bed" routine for good measure, the Doctor closed the bedroom door behind him and continued down the hallway. Now that Katherine was (presumably) asleep for good, his next goal was to try and do the same. The baby had long since stopped crying, so Rose must be in bed too. Sure enough, she was curled up under the sheets, out like a light.

With a brief sigh, the Doctor tossed his dressing gown back onto the chair and removed his glasses before climbing back into bed. Immediately, the prospect of sleep called to him, and the mattress felt far more comfortable than usual.

Blimey, this evening was particularly domestic. He almost wished that Torchwood would call him in as a consultant to break up the normality of it all. With that thought lingering in his mind, the Doctor rolled onto his side, wrapped his arms around Rose, and was asleep within seconds.

And on the other side of the city, deep within the storage facility of the Torchwood headquarters, the dimension cannon sparked to life for the first time in six years.

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**Author's note:** And thus ends chapter one. Feel free to leave a review! :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note: **Here's chapter 2! It's not quite as strong as it's predecessor, I think, so of anybody has ANY constructive criticism, please share! Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Thank you so, so, so much to everyone who reviewed, favorited, or followed this story! You have no idea how much it means to me! :)

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Doctor Who or Torchwood.

* * *

The Torchwood headquarters were situated in Canary Wharf, London, just as they were in Rose's home universe. But, unlike their parallel counterpart, Torchwood was a widely known and renowned organization on par with UNIT and the CIA. As such, Pete and Rose Tyler were treated like royalty, even though their ownership of Vitex was more than enough to warrant such treatment.

Though her dual role as Vitex Heiress and Torchwood Agent had its perks, Rose generally could not stand the attention. Her home address was undisclosed to the public thanks to her pseudo-father's influence, but that didn't stop the press from hounding her as soon as she was driving through the city. She kept her sunglasses on despite the cloudy weather and refused to acknowledge the paparazzo that was driving alongside her. When she finally pulled through the gated driveway of Canary Wharf, Rose breathed a sigh of relief. Only Torchwood personnel were allowed beyond those gates. She was in the clear. Between a lack of coffee and Katherine's crying fit at the Doctor's departure for work, the morning had been a nightmare and the last thing she needed was to fend off another overzealous photographer.

It was nine o'clock on the dot when Rose swiped her card key to enter the Torchwood offices on the forty-fifth floor of the building. She exhaled quietly and squared her shoulders upon entry. Right on time. Good. One less thing to worry about.

After navigating through the maze of hallways and throwing around several standard greetings to her colleagues, Rose unlocked her office and promptly collapsed into her desk chair. She hated this part of her job. The sooner she could sort through her paperwork, the sooner she could go downstairs into the labs and check in on artifact identifications. It was the only remotely exciting thing about this job as of late.

Rose began to leaf through a stack of newly delivered paperwork and, not for the first time, felt a pang of boredom. No wonder the Doctor always griped about domesticity and jobs and mortgages. It was no secret that she'd always preferred traveling to stationary life, but this was just ridiculous. Before the dimension cannon project, there had been all sorts of alien activity to investigate. The collapsing walls of the universe equated to constant instability and the Cardiff Rift expelled foreign matter like there was no tomorrow. Always incidents to look into, malevolent aliens to stop, realities to save. Now that the walls between universes were closed, nothing ever happened.

Of course it was wonderful to know that the universe was, generally speaking, safe from destruction. Rose knew that better than anyone. But she itched for some excitement, that old spark of livelihood that came from traveling. Torchwood work, however mundane, would have to suffice. It would be several years before the TARDIS was finished growing in their attic.

"Can't come soon enough," Rose muttered under her breath, feeding an unimportant document into the shredder. She glanced at the framed photograph on her desk, one of the only personal items she kept in her office. It was a candid photo, one that her mum had managed to take on her mobile phone two months ago when Miranda was born. Katherine was seated on a plastic hospital chair, awkwardly cradling a newborn Miranda with unabashed interest. The Doctor was crouched next to her, one hand delicately cupping the back of Miranda's head for support, but his face was split into a manic grin. Nobody was looking at the camera, and the quality was a little grainy, but Rose couldn't thank Jackie enough for taking the photo.

She allowed herself a small smile. Just a few more years until the TARDIS was finished, according to the Doctor, and soon enough they could fly off and show the girls every last corner of the universe. Rose bit back a grin and busied herself with a stack of paperwork. Katherine would love the TARDIS and everything it had to offer. She'd love exploring new worlds and venturing into the stars. It was too early to tell with Miranda, but surely she'd feel the same. After all, they _were_ the Doctor's daughters. To _not_ provide them with a life in the TARDIS would be a travesty.

There was a quick, sharp knock on her door. "Hey, stranger."

Rose looked up and, upon recognizing her guest, grinned ear to ear. "What are you doing here?" she exclaimed, standing up and walking to the door with open arms. "You're not back already, are you?"

Lisa Hallett smiled and returned the embrace. "No, I'm back. Only half-days, but I'm back. The baby's finally taking a bottle so I figured, why not? I was tired of staying home. I needed to feel useful again."

"You haven't missed much," Rose said, gesturing weakly towards the paperwork on her desk.

"So Ianto tells me," Lisa said. She reached into her pocket and withdrew a mobile phone. "But I needed a change of pace. Elliot's a handful, look at him! Six months old and he's already crawling, gets his hands on everything in sight. His favorite haunt is the pantry. Look at this, I found the two of them like this last week." Lisa held up her phone, scrolling through photos of her infant son. The last photo depicted her fiancée, Torchwood employee Ianto Jones, and their son Elliot. The baby was grasping at a torn package of biscuits while Ianto smiled wearily into the camera.

"Anyway, you're one to talk," Lisa continued, pocketing the phone. "You've got a two-month-old at home and you've been back for ages. That's got to be some kind of record."

"I was also bedridden and generally useless for nine months. If I stayed home any longer than that, I…" Rose's voice trailed off and she shook her head. "I'd have gone mad. I can't do that."

Lisa raised her eyebrows in agreement. She opened her mouth to speak again, but her mobile interrupted her. Seconds later, Rose's own phone chimed from the desk.

Rose's brow furrowed in concern as she returned to her desk and picked up the phone. _It's never just a coincidence,_ she thought. When multiple Torchwood phones went off at once, something was amiss. She punched in the passcode and opened up a message from her father.

_Get to storage unit F3 ASAP. Dimension cannon acting up._

The abnormality of the message itself hit Rose just as strongly as Pete's uncharacteristically cold delivery. The dimension cannon was acting up? What the hell was that supposed to mean? It hadn't been active since the Daleks and the Crucible. It was nothing more than a piece of metal locked up deep inside the storage facility. It couldn't possibly function unless the universe was in danger of collapsing, and the Doctor had ensured that that would never happen again.

Worry gnawed at the base of Rose's stomach. She immediately regretted her wish for more excitement at work. Still, best not to jump to any conclusions. She'd have to take a look at the cannon herself. Biting her lower lip, Rose stuffed her mobile into her pocket and draped her Torchwood ID lanyard around her neck.

"I think we got the same message," Lisa said warily, following Rose out of the office and into the corridor. "That was Ianto. He said something about abnormal readings downstairs. They just got a message from Torchwood Three about rift activity in Cardiff about fifteen minutes ago."

"I got a call from my dad in storage about the cannon," Rose murmured. "Maybe the rift activity affected it." They reached the elevator and she assaulted the call button, willing it to speed up. She glanced over her shoulder at Lisa and managed a smile as the doors finally opened. "Welcome back."

They parted ways in the elevator. Lisa exited three floors down to join Ianto, but Rose continued all the way into the third sublevel basement of Torchwood One. The storage facility was well-lit but sparsely furnished; the corridors were starkly white, as if trying to compensate for the lack of sunlight. Rose buttoned up her blazer against the chilly air and jogged down the hallway. She could hear voices emitting from Unit F3, where the dimension cannon was locked up under constant surveillance. The storage unit was guarded by a computer system, and Rose had to swipe her ID and enter the correct passcode to get through the doors. Once this was achieved, she slid through the doors before they could fully open and entered the unit.

The dimension cannon sat directly ahead of her, and engineers were swarming around the circular structure like fruit flies. Pete Tyler stood off to the side, leaning over a computer screen and speaking quickly with the computer technician. Rose promptly joined him and took a look at the computers, tucking her hair behind her ears. "What's going on?" she asked.

"We were hoping you could tell us," Pete said dryly without looking up. "About forty minutes ago, the security cameras picked up on some activity in the cannon. It was active for about three seconds before shutting down. It did the same thing twenty minutes ago, and then again sixteen minutes ago—there, there, stop right there." Pete pointed over the computer technician's shoulder towards the screen. Security footage of unit F3 was displayed from four different angles, but Pete was focusing on the top right, which had the most direct view. "All right, play it again."

Rose leaned in, holding her hair out of her face and watching closely. The black-and-white footage was crystal clear, and the timestamp was running smoothly. Several seconds of footage passed without incident, and without any warning, all four cameras were blinded by a flash of light. It vanished as quickly as it came, and electricity began to snake around the metal frame of the cannon. Moments later, it stopped completely, and the unit returned to its usual uneventful state. The sequence repeated twice more as Pete fast-forwarded through the footage.

Rose stared at the screen, brow furrowed as she tried to make sense of the tapes. When she was dimension hopping all those years ago, the cannon was activated with a gentle hum, and the archway served as a portal of sorts for the time vortex. Once fully operational there would be a faint glow emitting from the center of the cannon, and that would vanish as soon as she jumped through. But this? This was not normal, and that kind of reaction couldn't have been caused by a simple technical error.

"What have you found so far? Maybe it's some sort of electromagnetic interference from upstairs? Maybe an artifact set it off? Have we been hacked?" Rose straightened and turned towards the engineers swarming the cannon.

"Tough to say, Mrs. Tyler," one of the engineers replied. Despite the fact that her name was legally Rose Tyler-Smith, it never caught on. "The cannon was definitely active. We've confirmed that beyond a doubt. There's traces of…what was your nickname for it? Void stuff? Well, anyway, there's traces of in the archway."

"I'm going upstairs," Pete said, already halfway across the storage unit. "Ianto Jones is in touch with Torchwood Three as we speak. They can tell us exactly what happened in Cardiff and hopefully that'll explain what the hell just happened here. Rose, I want you to stay here and figure out what you can from the cannon. You know it better than anybody."

Rose nodded in acknowledgement as Pete exited the unit and approached the dimension cannon. It looked perfectly normal, just an ordinary chunk of metal. There wasn't any outward damage sustained from the...whatever it was. She picked up a radiation monitor from one of the engineer's toolboxes and quickly scanned the room. Slightly higher than usual, but nowhere close to hazardous—

_BANG!_

The explosion knocked Rose off her feet and sent her flying across the storage unit, where she landed roughly on her side and rolled face first into the wall. Pain exploded in her right hip and she choked out a scream._ What the hell?!_ She thought, frantically grasping at her hip in a futile attempt to contain the burning. There was a second _bang_, slightly louder than the first, and the storage unit was flooded with white light. Rose threw up her arm to shield her face, gritting her teeth as a high-pitched ringing threatened to burst her eardrums.

An unexpected wind rushed at her and whipped her hair in every possible direction. Rose squinted against the light, steadfastly ignoring the pain in her hip. She had to see what was going on, had to see whatever the security cameras missed. The light was blinding, but she forced her eyes open. She made out a faint outline of the cannon, and in the middle, a solitary figure faded in and out of her vision.

Another scream, shorter but just as intense, echoed into the unit and another gust of wind rushed out of the cannon. Rose gasped and clenched her jaw as it threw her into the wall a second time. She closed her eyes against the noise, the wind, the white light and grasped frantically for something, anything to hold. It was too much like the first time at Canary Wharf, too much like that goddamned wall and the Void that threatened to consume her.

She gasped as the wind threatened to rip her away from the wall. She was being pulled towards the cannon, just as she was when she was nineteen and battling the Daleks and Cyberman. Her hands frantically fumbled for something, _anything_ that could keep her anchored in this universe. She wouldn't be sucked into the void—she could not, _would_ not leave now, she could never leave the Doctor again—_DOCTOR!_ No, no, no, this was not happening again, _please no NOT AGAIN—_

Her fingers closed around a bar of machinery for the security cameras. She clung to the bar with both hands until her knuckles felt ready to burst. She would not leave. She would not let this happen. She _would not let this happen_. She couldn't leave, couldn't be without the Doctor again, couldn't leave him behind, not alone, not with the kids, _oh god oh god I can't leave them behind please no no no…_

Everything was shaking. The room felt ready to fall apart. Rose felt ready to fall apart. She felt her legs and torso being pulled towards the dimension cannon, just as they were last time. There were no Daleks or Cyberman flying by, but how was this any different? Not again. Not again. She held onto the bar with everything she had.

Another bang, louder than its predecessors, burst from the cannon, and just like that, everything stopped.

Her body fell to the floor with a thud. It took nearly a full minute for Rose to open her eyes. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat. _Breathe._ She was still here. Still in this room, still in storage unit F3. Her chest heaved with the effort of breathing and she collapsed against the wall. "Doctor," she murmured, and only after speaking did she remember that the Doctor wasn't at her side like last time. This was _not_ like last time. He was here, in this universe. He was on the other side of the city, yes, in a lecture hall going on and on about temporal physics to a class of uni students, but he was _here_.

"I'm here," Rose whispered, closing her eyes again. "I'm here, I'm here."

She gingerly released the bar and realized that her hands were violently trembling. Her whole body was shaking, actually, and her hip was screaming in pain. But she was here. She was not in the void. She was in the same universe that she woke up in this morning.

A couple of engineers and computer technicians murmured faintly in the distance, but Rose's attention was focused elsewhere. She slowly glanced towards the cannon, which was slightly singed around the edges but otherwise intact, as though nothing had happened at all. A small part of her brain was screaming at her: _What the bloody hell was that?_ The rest of her brain, however, was screaming something entirely different: _Doctor. I need the Doctor. _

She carefully withdrew her mobile from her trouser pocket. It took three tries to type the passcode, and several more to properly hit the Doctor's speed dial key. She used one hand to clutch at her aching hip while the other held her phone, and her head rested on the icy wall.

He picked up on the fifth ring. "Rose! Rose, are you all right?" the Doctor demanded. He sounded out of breath and his voice was strained, as though he'd been shouting.

How did he know to ask? Did other people feel the explosion, too? Did the whole city feel it? How much damage was there? Was anyone killed? "What?" she managed, still fighting to regulate her breathing.

"_Are you all right?_" the Doctor demanded again.

"How did you know about that?" Rose said. She grit her teeth against a flare of pain in her side.

"The earthquake!" The Doctor exclaimed impatiently. "The earthquake, Rose, we all felt it—_Julia, stay down, I'm coming over now, don't move your knee—_now come on, tell me, _are you okay_?"

"I'm fine, yeah," Rose looked back towards the cannon. "It wasn't an earthquake. It was here, at Torchwood-the dimension cannon, it—I don't know _what_ it did, but I think it opened the void."

The Doctor's voice was muffled, as if he'd wedged his mobile between his ear and shoulder, like he always did when multitasking. "Okay, Julia, it looks dislocated, don't move—wait. _What_?" His voice rose in volume at the last word.

"It opened the void," Rose repeated, staring carefully at the cannon. "I don't know how, but it opened the void."

There was a brief pause before the Doctor spoke. His voice was an octave higher. "What?"

"The dimension cannon. Opened. The void." Rose said testily. "It's closed now, but I don't know when it'll happen again. Something's happening in Cardiff with the rift. Doctor, you need to get here. Now."

"I'm on my way." The line disconnected before he could finish saying the last word.

Rose returned the phone to her pocket, noting that she had half a dozen text messages from Pete inquiring about her wellbeing, but decided to ignore those until she could evacuate the floor. She grit her teeth against her throbbing hip and pulled herself to her feet. "Is everyone all right?" she called, surveying her colleagues. Remarkably, everyone was alive. Some were badly injured—one had clearly broken a leg—but alive. She braced on arm against the wall for support and squared her shoulders.

"Everybody out. Go upstairs, outside if you can. I'm putting this floor on lockdown until the Doctor gets here."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Any feedback you may have would be greatly appreciated :) Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note: Once again, thank you to everyone who was kind enough to leave a review, follow or favorite this story! It really means a lot!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own any of this.**

* * *

The Doctor was used to driving with music. He found it to be calming and distracted him from the fact that he was hearing the car's engine, rather than the TARDIS's. Never mind the fact that listening to the radio often kept him sane when stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. If he and Rose were in the car, the radio was tuned to the Beatles (who, in this universe, broke up in the mid-'80s after McCartney died in a car crash), Elvis (who continued to make music until dying of natural causes in 2009), or on occasion, Queen (who were all still alive and enjoying successful solo careers). If the kids were present, the Doctor plugged in his iPod and sang Disney songs with Katherine until they reached their destination. "I Just Can't Wait to Be King" and "Hakuna Matata" were crowd favorites.

Today, however, the Doctor was listening intently to a news station as he proceeded to break every traffic law in London.

_"Reports of fire, structural damage, and numerous injuries are pouring in from all over the city…officials are giving this a 6.8 rating on the Richter scale…similar reports are coming in from Cardiff and Glasgow…reports of areal disturbances as well, all zeppelins have been grounded until further notice…still trying to determine the epicenter…no obvious cause of the three simultaneous earthquakes…President Harriet Jones declaring a state of emergency…the Torchwood Institute is reported to be involved in the ongoing investigation…"_

The Doctor momentarily tuned out the announcer's maddeningly calm voice, slamming on the brakes as a man bolted across the road. A nearby building was smoking and people were streaming out in a panic. He swore under his breath and impatiently steered around an abandoned car. Emergency vehicles were clogging up the roads and _damn it,_ what he wouldn't have given for his TARDIS right about now.

The Doctor wondered if this was what it was like for ordinary people, to wake up expecting a perfectly normal day only to have the world turned on it's head in an instant. He certainly welcomed the excitement after nearly six years of relative boredom, but not at this cost. Just this morning he was sipping tea through a travel mug and reassuring a tearful Katherine that yes, he would _really_ be home from work in just a few hours. Just this morning he has kissed Rose goodbye, dropped the girls off at Jackie's, expertly found prime parking at the university, and did a fairly good job at maintaining his student's attention in the midst of a lecture on temporal physics. And just like _that_, the Doctor had lost his footing, the power had flickered, and his students began screaming.

Thankfully the worst to happen was Julia Talbot dislocating her left knee. As soon as he wrapped it and summoned a nurse from the university health center, the Doctor had called Jackie to check in on the kids and made a mad dash for Torchwood One. He could have patched up Julia on his own without a problem, but as much as he cared for his students, he couldn't afford to wait around just now. If Rose was correct in saying that the void was opened, then there were much bigger problems to deal with than a dislocated knee.

He swore under his breath and drove through the gated driveway leading to Torchwood One. The asphalt parking lot was littered with debris from the surrounding buildings of Canary Wharf, and three cars were badly damaged by a huge tree limb. Ahead of him, wedged between the Torchwood building and the Citigroup headquarters, the four-story parking garage was partially collapsed. Alarms were blaring from every building, none more so than Torchwood, and when the Doctor looked up, he could see that virtually the whole tower was alight with warning lights. Oh, that was bad. Very, very bad.

He seriously considered abandoning the car where it stood and running the rest of the way. It would be faster than this, that was for sure. He was in the process of pulling onto the grass when his mobile rang, vibrating against the cup holder and his travel mug of now-cold tea. In one swift motion he yanked the key out of the ignition, picked up the phone, and scrambled out of the car. "Where the hell are you?" Rose shouted. It was just as loud on her end.

"Outside the parking lot, I'm on my way up now. Where are you?"

"Top floor on the helipad. The lifts were knocked out so you'll have to take the stairs. Dad gave you full clearance, just come up."

The Doctor didn't have to be told twice. He made it across the parking lot and all the way to the top floor of the building in record time. Part of him was afraid of what he would find upon reaching his destination. He dimly recalled hearing reports of earthquakes in Glasgow and Cardiff. It was very likely that they were sending out helicopters to investigate. If those Torchwood branches were reaching out to the headquarters, then things were much, much worse than he'd initially believed.

The helipad was a specially-designed feature of Torchwood One that they'd added during the war with the Cybermen a decade earlier. During the war it had apparently been used to ferry Torchwood agents, soldiers, and civilians when the ground was overrun by Cybermen. Nowadays the helipad was used in times of extreme crisis, when cars and trains would not be fast enough, or when victims of extraterrestrial-related attacks had to be airlifted into the Torchwood medical facility. If Rose was at the helipad with her father, then she was going on a field mission, and a rather critical one apparently.

As promised, the Doctor wasn't stopped once on his way to the fiftieth floor, which existed mainly as a hangar for Torchwood's three helicopters, one of which was missing. A second helicopter was poised for takeoff and personnel were loading supplies into the cabin. Up above, a fourth of the pyramid ceiling had pulled away to reveal a perfectly ordinary blue sky.

Rose, dressed in her black and gray field clothes, was having a heated discussion with Pete in the far corner of the hangar. A pang of relief hit the Doctor squarely in the chest. He'd known that Rose was fine all along, but seeing proof of this was inexplicably comforting. Before he knew what he was doing, the Doctor sprinted over and enveloped Rose in a crushing hug. _You're here, you're safe, you're fine. Thank Rassilon, you're fine._ She reciprocated almost immediately. "You're all right?" he asked, just to be absolutely certain.

"M'fine," she said into his shoulder. "Bruised my hip but I'm fine."

"She's not _fine_," Pete said irritably. "She was almost pulled through the void and now she's insisting on going to investigate the crash in Cardiff. For god's sake, Rose, _go to the infirmary_."

The Doctor stared at Rose for a moment, unsure which thought to process first. _Rose was almost pulled through the void…_had he heard correctly? While he was in that bloody lecture hall trying to pacify his students, Rose was within an inch of falling into hell itself, with nobody to catch her this time. She was here now, she was safe, but a dull sense of horror had already curled around the Doctor's heart. He pulled Rose into his arms and held onto her with everything he had, forcing away all memories of Battle of Canary Wharf.

"I just heard from Mum. She and the kids are fine," Rose said. When the Doctor didn't answer, her voice lowered considerably. "We put that floor on lockdown. Nobody can get in or out, Doctor, the cannon is completely sealed off."

He nodded and reluctantly pulled away. Pete took this moment to enter the conversation. "When the earthquake hit us, it also hit Glasgow and Cardiff. Glasgow has a lot of damage and we sent out a team to survey the area. Now, there's been rift activity in Cardiff all morning. It started when the cannon began acting up. But when the void opened downstairs, a ship crashed right off of Tiger Bay. Torchwood Three couldn't get too close, but it's alien in origin and it's giving off funny readings. They think that something—whatever it is—survived the crash."

The Doctor still had a hand on Rose's shoulder, but he was staring intently into the distance, trying to put the pieces together. "Rose, what happened when you were down there?"

When Rose finished debriefing him on the details, the Doctor's grip on her shoulder increased and he wrinkled his nose in confusion. "But that's impossible! To just rip open the void like that would take a _phenomenal_ amount of power!"

"What are you thinking?" Rose asked.

The Doctor frowned. "The cannon wasn't designed to open the void. It was supposed to seek out preexisting weak spots in the walls of the universe and make a…pathway, of sorts. Like picking a lock on a door. Whatever ripped open the void didn't bother trying to open those doors. It just plowed through the wall and made a hole of it's own."

Pete was quiet for a moment. "The rift spits out space junk every day. A ship is pretty…unusual, to say the least."

"So whatever it is plowed two holes in the wall," Rose said carefully.

"Maybe three, if they find anything in Glasgow," the Doctor said. He ran a hand over his face. "Blimey, this isn't how I expected the day to go."

The helicopter behind them had started its engine. Rose looked over her shoulder as the helicopter blades began to turn. Someone announced the final boarding call for Cardiff. "I've got to go," she said.

"Rose!" Pete exclaimed, grabbing her arm. "_Go to the infirmary. _Please. Don't make me call your mother." There was a note of desperation in his voice at the threat.

"I only bruised my hip! You said I know the cannon better than anyone," Rose said impatiently. "I'll know what to look for in the ship's wreckage."

"I'd like to take a look at the cannon myself," the Doctor said. "Rose and I can stay in radio contact and compare notes." He didn't add the part about how Rose would be much safer in Cardiff if the cannon decided to activate again.

Pete wavered for a moment, visibly torn between his duties as Director of Torchwood and his duties as Rose's father. He reluctantly let go of her arm. "I'm asking this as your dad, love," he said quietly, or as quietly as he could over the helicopter. "If your hip starts bothering you, if _anything_ starts bothering you, get out."

Rose smiled and nodded in affirmation. She reached into the pocket of her black cargo pants and withdrew an earpod, which had been shrunk and completely redesigned in the aftermath of Lumic's reign of terror. It resembled an iPod headphone more than anything else now. Once it was securely in her right ear, she pulled the Doctor in for a kiss, and ran across the hangar to jump into the helicopter cabin.

The Doctor, Pete, and all remaining Torchwood workers exited the hangar and watched the helicopter take off through a massive observation window. Neither the Doctor nor Pete looked away until the ceiling hatch closed, sealing the pyramid and restoring the tower to its usual appearance. "Well," Pete exhaled heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose, "Let's get you an earpod and get you down to the cannon." The Doctor nodded wordlessly, looking over his shoulder for a moment before following Pete down the corridor.

* * *

By the looks of it, Cardiff was in much better shape than London, but the damage was still alarmingly extensive. Rose had surveyed the city as the helicopter flew them to the Torchwood Three base, and continued to do so after they'd landed and made their way to the Cardiff Docks by automobile. There was plenty of structural damage, along with a couple of fallen trees and flooding near the coastal areas.

The Docks, however, had the appearance of nuclear testing site. Most of the boats had capsized in the water. With the roads completely torn apart, the jeeps were forced to continue by off-roading. The houses and businesses closest to the marina were either engulfed in smoke or partially collapsed. And about a quarter of a mile down the road that no longer existed, a crater stood in place the boathouses.

The crater was about a mile in diameter. Eight other teams, filled with the combined forces of Torchwood bases One and Three, would be entering the crash site at different points of origin in order to cover more ground. As soon as her five-man team had their equipment secured and their protective wetsuits in place, Rose squared her shoulders and made her way to the edge of the crater. Her earpod made a slight "ping," signaling its activation.

"Can you hear me, Rose?" The Doctor's tinny voice rang in her ear.

"Wotcha," Rose said into her wrist communicator in a feeble attempt to lighten the mood. It failed spectacularly, but he had the good graces not to acknowledge this. She walked until her toes were touching the edge of the crater. About nine meters down, amid a shallow pool of saltwater, the wreckage of a small shuttle had plunged into the mud.

After grappling down the crater walls and wading through the saltwater (Rose found herself supremely grateful for the wetsuit, as the water was incredibly cold), they approached the hull of the ship. Upon closer inspection it looked more like a rocket, and one of the dive teams had sent out a message confirming that the vessel was much larger than initially believed. About half of it was buried in mud.

"Greg, Patrick, Sam, could you do a perimeter search of our branch of the hull?" Rose asked. The agents nodded and did as he was told.

"Rose," Jake Simmonds called, where he was wading about five yards away. "There's a breech in the hull. We can get in through here."

She joined Jake and inspected the breech. It looked like it once served as an escape hatch, but the metal was blackened from the crash and the hinges were in danger of falling off. Yes, they could certainly use this as a point of entry. After a quick scan for life forms and radiation, Rose fiddled with her communicator. "This is Rose Tyler. We've found a point of entry on the southern end of the ship. We're going in. Backup requested."

"Careful, Rose," the Doctor's voice echoed in her ear again.

With Jake's support, Rose grabbed onto a handlebar and hauled herself out of the water. Not for the first time, a childhood of gymnastics had served her well; she managed to swing herself up and onto the hull without loosing her balance and falling into the water. Jake followed in suit, and after another scan, gently coaxed the door open. The hatch opened with a grating screech, revealing a black pit.

"Which way is up?" Jake said dryly as he and Rose pulled out their torches. Even with the added light, there was no way of determining the floor from the ceiling.

"One way to find out." Rose stuck her torch between her teeth and, keeping a firm grip on the edge, gently lowered herself into the hatch. Her foot caught a ledge of some sort and she used it as a crutch on her way down.

"What do you see, Rose?" the Doctor said. He sounded slightly distracted, as if he was multitasking with the canon.

Rose found another handlebar and held onto it, using her other hand to pluck the torch from her mouth. She ran the light over every available surface. "Looks like a hallway," she said, nose wrinkled. It smelled sharply of smoke. "It's a really, really narrow hallway. Everything's white or sterling silver."

"Any markings?" the Doctor asked. Jake climbed in behind Rose.

"Not really," Rose murmured, shining the torch on the wall directly ahead of her. "Oh, wait—I think these are scuff marks. We're on the ceiling, Jake, that's the floor ahead of us."

"Well, that answers onequestion," Jake said. His eye-roll was practically audible.

"Scuff marks," the Doctor said thoughtfully. "Someone's been there a while, then. Always running in and out of the ship, they might be travelers. What else?"

Rose stuck the torch back in her mouth and continued to climb down, using an array of handlebars as a ladder. The ship was prepared for accidents, then—

She gasped as her foot slipped on a wet handlebar and she grabbed onto the nearest ledge. She managed to catch her fall, but not without dropping her torch and smacking the side of her head on the ceiling. "Rose? Rose!" the Doctor's voice was garbled and quickly eclipsed by static. Her earpod went silent and Rose swore under her breath as the torch made a splash down below. _Fantastic._ That meant the lower portion of the corridor was flooded.

"You okay?" Jake called.

"I'm fine," she said, checking her communicator and ignoring the dull ache in her skull. "My outgoing signals are clear. I can't hear you, Doctor, but you can hear me. It's partially flooded. We need a dive team down here."

"There's another corridor there. Let's check it out," Jake said, using his torch to point this out. Sure enough, a couple of yards down and at the waterline, there was a doorway leading to another hall. _It's not that far of a jump,_ Rose thought, eyeballing the distance. Her torch was shining dimly at the bottom. _No different than going off a diving board._ She carefully descended a few more steps before hopping down.

For a moment she was underwater, but she quickly bobbed to the surface like a cork. She looked back up and frowned. Maybe the Doctor had rubbed off on her more than she'd thought. As soon as she crawled into the corridor, Jake did the same. The second hallway was as dark and narrow as the first; they had to make their way through the ship on all fours, even though said extremities were partially submerged in water. Rose fished a scanner out of the protective case on her utility belt and clicked it on. Jake kept his torch trained squarely ahead of them.

"Jake," Rose exclaimed as the scanner came to life, holding it up for him to see. She didn't have to press anything. The signals were spiking, indicating the presence of two sets of heartbeats. She spoke into her communicator. "We've got two survivors, Doctor. I repeat: we've got two survivors." Her earpod buzzed in reply, but the static was too thick to decipher anything.

Rose's gaze was flickering back and forth between the scanner and the hallway ahead of her. Without turning around, she gave Jake the signal to arm himself. He shuffled and the torchlight bounced erratically as he changed positions. A moment later, she heard the faint metallic hum of Jake's stun gun. Rose followed the scanner's lead, one hand poised to grab her own gun at a moment's notice.

They reached a mechanized door, which would have perfectly blended in with the wall had it not been for the tiny glass window giving it away. The scanner spiked considerably, and in the same moment, Rose felt her heart skip a beat. She looked over her shoulder to see Jake in a crabwalk position, holding the gun in one hand and the torch in the other. At their point of entry, the requested backup and dive team were slowly crawling into the ship.

She wasn't alone, then. Everyone was on edge. Whatever was in that room, it was alive and hasn't shown any signs of hostility thus far. Surely a malevolent creature would have attacked when they penetrated the hull. Rose carefully muted the scanner and, readying her stun gun, looked through the window.

For a moment Rose mistook the room as the ship's cockpit, but she quickly realized that it was an engine room or maintenance hatch. The nearest wall was covered in wires and buttons; the computers were far too advanced to be from the twenty-first century. The Doctor would be able to definitively identify the era, but Rose would have guessed the early 6000s, give or take. It was a shot in the dark, of course. This universe was quite different, after all. But that was a matter for later on. "The ship's from the future," Rose murmured into her communicator.

"_Wah yr?_" The Doctor's voice was barely comprehensible in her ear. "_Ro?_"

"About…sixty-first century?" she said, craning her neck to see the room from another angle. "I think it's human. The dimensions of the ship are right. Can't say for sure, though—oh my god."

"What is it?" Jake hissed, tensing.

"There's a girl in there. Jake, there's a girl in there! _We need a medic in here now!_" Rose shouted down the hall, where other field agents were gradually making their way over.

"A girl?" Jake crawled next to Rose and took a look. His eyes widened. "Oh, shit!"

The girl's back was to them, and she was sprawled behind a wall of computers, half of her body underwater. She was young, scarcely twenty years old, and if the scanner was any indication, then there was somebody else trapped in there with her. Rose pocketed her tools and, with Jake's help, patted down the wall until they found the mechanism to open the door. The mechanics were utterly shot. It took their combined efforts to pry the door open, and even then it was a near-impossible task.

But Rose wasn't paying attention to that. She had to get in there and determine how badly the girl was hurt. She was alive, yes, and likely in need of a doctor. Time traveler or not, nobody could have gotten out of this crash unharmed.

A logical part of her brain was telling her to _slow down_ and think. Whoever this girl is, she ripped at least one hole in the fabric of reality. Nobody could do that. Granted, the Doctor had managed it, but he also had the most powerful ship in the universe at his disposal, and that was by _accident_. Rose knew a TARDIS when she saw one, and this girl was _not_ piloting a TARDIS. It was an ordinary, albeit futuristic, spaceship. Ordinary ships didn't open the void.

Rose inhaled deeply and slid into the room, trying to differentiate the floor from the ceiling but quickly giving up as she crawled towards the girl. Innocent until proven guilty, she decided. There was somebody else in here too, after all, judging by the scanner's heartbeat detector. "Hello?" Rose said, taking Jake's torch and waving it around the girl's head to try and get her attention. The girl didn't move. She was out cold. Still, Jake followed Rose closely with the stun gun pointed squarely at the girl as they approached.

Her blonde ponytail was barely intact, and her green shirt had a large rip along the seam. Rose carefully crawled to the other side in order to see the girl's face. Her pulse was visible in her neck. She was thin, as if she hadn't had a good meal in ages. "My god, she's just a kid," she said, staring in disbelief. She reached into her belt and withdrew a pair of cotton gloves, pressing one to a gash on the girl's hairline.

Jake gently helped Rose roll the girl onto her back, the gun lowered but still active. The girl inhaled sharply and screwed up her face. "Can you hear us?" he said. A medic was crawling in behind him.

Keeping one hand pressed to the girl's forehead, Rose leaned forward and grasped the girl's hand. "Can you hear us? Squeeze my hand if you can hear us." The girl's face was locked in a grimace and her eyes did not open, yet she managed to give Rose's hand a light squeeze. "My name's Rose," she said, enunciating each word. The Doctor's muffled words buzzed in her ear before fading out all together. "We're going to help you, okay?"

The medic crawled past Jake and began to treat the girl's head wound. She winced at the contact and her whole body tensed. Her eyes flew open and quickly found Rose's.

"Jenny," the girl gasped. Her voice was hoarse, as if she'd been screaming.

"Your name's Jenny?" Rose said. "Jake, scan the room for the second person." Jake complied and the medic continued to treat the head wound. At the doorway, two field agents and another medic were discussing the best course of action in regards to removing the girl.

"Jenny," the girl said through gritted teeth. She spoke again, as if the fate of the world hinged on the next word. "_Dad_."

"Your dad's here, too?" Rose asked. When she got no response, she raised her voice. She had to keep her awake. "Jenny, is your dad here?" Her hand went slack in Rose's and her eyes rolled back into her head.

She and the medic simultaneously reached to check her vitals; the medic pressed two fingers to her throat and Rose did the same to her wrist. "Oh my god!" Rose exclaimed, dropping the girl's hand like a hot coal.

"Jesus," the medic gasped. He too pulled away as if he'd been burned. "You feel that?"

She couldn't formulate a coherent reply, and so she forced her mind to enter the Rose Tyler, Torchwood Agent mode of thinking. "Get her out of here. Airlift her back to Torchwood One. _Now_."

The medic eyed her strangely but complied. Moments later, a small team of medical personnel hoisted the girl onto a makeshift stretcher and discussing their plan of action. Someone strapped an oxygen mask onto the girl's face as they carried her out of the room.

"Jake, stop scanning. We're going with her."

"What? What about the second person—"

"There is no second person!" Rose snapped. Her mind was reeling. She had to get back to London. She had to talk to the Doctor; these bloody earpods were useless. She scrambled out of the room and back into the hallway, following the medics out and awkwardly talking into her communicator. "Doctor, I'm coming back. Meet me in the medical facility as soon as we get back."

_"Rose?"_ her husband's voice was absurdly faint in her ear. "_What's happening?_ _Are you okay? What girl did you see?_"

He'd mentioned her twice. Only twice, in all the years they'd been together, but Rose understood the significance nonetheless. Once when he was still brand-new to this universe and detailing his adventures during their separation. Again when Rose was pregnant with Katherine, and he was telling her about the children he'd lost.

Rose knew what she'd felt. That girl had that same strange heartbeat, a heartbeat Rose had never thought she'd feel again. Two hearts tapping out that four-beat pattern. She would know it anywhere. It was the sound she had associated with love and safety and danger and adventure. It was the sound she often found herself fondly missing when she fell asleep with a single human heart beating against her cheek.

It couldn't be.

_The Doctor said she died._

"Rose!" The Doctor's voice was still incredibly faint, but the frustration was clear as day. "C'mon, talk to me! What's happening?"

Rose swallowed before allowing herself to speak. "She said her name is Jenny," she said as evenly as she could manage. "Doctor, she's got two hearts."

The Doctor never answered, but the static spoke volumes.

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**Author's Note: And thus ends chapter three! If you liked it, please leave a review :) Feedback means a lot to me and it really helps motivate me with my writing! I'm always open to constructive criticism. Thanks again!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: Once again, I want to extend a huge thank-you to everyone who reviewed! I've been saying this left and right, but your feedback means a lot to me and I hope I was able to live up to your expectations with this chapter.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who.**

* * *

The first time that the Doctor lost a child, he was in his eighth incarnation and had just returned to Gallifrey. The Daleks had launched their first attack on the planet and dropped a slew of bombs on the city of Olyesti. His second-oldest son was among the dead.

The second time he lost a child, the war was on and the countryside was being torn to bits. His wife and youngest son were taken from their home and shot until they ran out of regenerations.

The third time he lost a child, they were in battle. Several TARDISes had fallen into the jaws of the Nightmare Child and dozens were lost. His third-oldest son and granddaughter were never heard from again.

The fourth time he lost a child, he was evacuating the Academy as a fleet of Dalek ships descended upon them. He was blown into his ninth regeneration while his only daughter was blown into pieces.

The fifth time he lost a child, he was piloting his TARDIS away from the remnants of Gallifrey. He had just executed billions. He tried to forget that his oldest son was among them.

The sixth time he lost a child, he was well into his tenth life and had inadvertently landed on the war-torn planet of Messaline. A girl was artificially born from his DNA against his will. He had called her a _soldier, _a _clone, _a _generated anomaly, _an _echo._ She was biologically his and a perfect stranger all at once. He refused to be her father until the very end, and yet she still took a bullet for him.

The Doctor was used to watching people die. He was used to the crushing guilt that accompanied his failure to save a life. He was used to losing the people he loved, and he was used to burying children who were far too young. It should be impossible for anyone to cheat death like _this_.

He could have heard incorrectly. He must have. The earpods were malfunctioning, after all. He knew what he saw on Messaline. Jenny had died in his arms with no signs of regenerating. It _could not _be possible for her to be in the wreckage of that ship. But if there was one thing that he had learned over the last nine hundred years, it was that the universe loved to challenge his definition of "impossible."

He didn't want to get his hopes up. He shouldn't even _let_ himself get his hopes up. _But sometimes everybody lives,_ the Doctor thought as he frantically tore through the Torchwood medical facility. Maybe they could come back from the dead, too.

* * *

The first thing she noticed was the horrendously purified smell. There were no specific properties, or rather, there were no specific properties that her brain could identify at the moment. It was a challenge to open her eyes, much less pick out the chemical compounds in the air. All she knew was that the air smelled incredibly clean, as if she was trapped inside a vacuum. Cold, fresh, and disturbingly clean. Jenny had absolutely no idea where she was—it couldn't be her ship—but the obvious lack of microbes was quite off-putting.

She inhaled and opened her eyes, only to squeeze them shut again. Okay, definitely not her ship then. The cabin of her ship was white, but not _this_ white. This was a blinding, surgical white devoid of any scuffmarks or imperfections that made it feel like home. Given her inherent inclination towards militaristic procedures, Jenny considered herself to be a very tidy person. This however…was unnaturally spotless. She felt the need to scratch the walls or something just to break up the unsettling monotony of it all.

After squinting and getting herself accustomed to the harsh lighting, Jenny did a quick inventory. No missing limbs or broken bones, no apparent internal injuries, vision not impaired, and (she quietly inhaled and listened for the air rushing into her lungs) her hearing did not suffer any damage. Without sitting up, she gently ran her right hand over her face and cringed when her fingertips touched a patch of gauze. A laceration of undetermined severity at the hairline…her brain activity was normal thus far, so likely not serious. A couple of stitches, perhaps, but otherwise she was in good shape. Excellent shape, really. Jenny frowned and tried to understand why this came as a surprise.

She carefully brought herself into a sitting position. She was in some kind of medical bay, and a web of red-and-black wires snaked out of her shirt into a machine on her right. Jenny ran through her mental checklist in an effort to identify the contraption and her eyes widened upon realizing that it was a heart monitor. Survival instincts kicked in and she reached into her shirt, trying to pull the sticky patches from her chest. Nobody could figure out how her binary vascular system worked. That was practically Rule Number One. She'd learned that the hard way years ago, and her father had reiterated that rule more than once—

Jenny froze and backtracked through her memories. _Where's Dad?_ The question bounced around in her head, partly out of her instinct to keep fellow soldiers alive and mainly out of pure and simple familial love. Where was he? She was just with him; she was talking to him through her ship's radio. He was in the TARDIS a short distance ahead of her and they were running, like they always did. She was alone in this medical bay. Was he in a similar room nearby? Were they questioning him, or worse, studying him? He must be injured, or he would have come to her aid by now. It was the only explanation. She refused to consider the alternative.

With newfound resolve, Jenny ripped off one of the wires and surveyed the room. None of her belongings were in the vicinity and she swallowed her panic upon realizing that her gun was also missing. She could make do without it for now. Anything could be a weapon if she held it right. The bed sheet could strangle someone. She could rip off a piece of the heart monitor and use it as a club or knife. As soon as she got out of here, she could easily take down a guard, steal his gun, and find her way back to the ship.

She yanked another wire off her chest. One more to go and _GET OFF ME GET OFF ME GET OFF ME!_

Jenny shrieked at the top of her lungs as four strangers pinned her down to the bed by her extremities. She thrashed against them, but even with her superior strength, they were just a little too much. "Get _off,_" she snarled, heaving her torso off of the mattress as a dark-skinned female began to reattach the wires. "Get off of me!" She craned her neck and tried to bite down on the woman's hand. It wasn't her finest mode of defense, but it would have to do.

"Jenny, stop moving, or I'll have to sedate you," the woman said firmly.

_No sedatives. Fight them off. Get out. _She managed to free her left leg and delivered a lightning-fast kick to the nearest doctor. She kept it moving, swinging at anyone who came too close and working to free the rest of her body. She grit her teeth as a sharp needle pierced her right thigh, and her muscles immediately began to relax. _No no no no get off me no no no_…Jenny's thoughts clumped together until there was nothing left but sheer panic. _So stupid let my guard down never let your guard down a good soldier doesn't let their guard down stupid stupid get me out stupid._

Her arms and legs were curiously heavy, as if her blood had been replaced with metal. She blinked back frustrated tears and fought against the chemicals regulating her uneven breathing. _Never allow the enemy to see a display of weakness._

The restraining doctors stepped back, leaving the dark-skinned female, who was calmly reattaching the heart monitors. As soon as her job was done, she carefully inspected the gauze on Jenny's forehead. "Your forehead looks fine," she said with clinical detachment. When she spoke again, her voice was kinder. "Can't have you popping those stitches now, can we?"

Jenny couldn't tell if her blank expression was a product of her own free will or the sedatives, but she went with it regardless. "Where am I?" she said flatly. Her jaw was slack and her words muffled, as if she was speaking through a wad of cotton balls. "Who are you?"

The woman smiled faintly. "Doctor Martha Jones. I've been taking care of you," she said. "Do you remember how you got here?"

Memories assaulted Jenny's brain, coming at her so quickly that she could barely decipher them. There was a high-pitched ringing, horribly intense heat, and she couldn't tell which way was up because the ship was spiraling out of control—

_"I'm trying to lower the shields, hold on!" she screamed into her radio…_

_ "C'mon, Jenny, we have to go!" her dad shouted back at her…_

_ "I'm trying!"_

_ The ship was falling apart, she was trying to escape, and something was after them. It crashed into her, and there was a horrible explosion as if her ship was on fire, and she had to _**get out**_…And suddenly the TARDIS was dangerously close to her ship, flying alongside the escape hatch, she could see it through the window…the door was open and she could see a wild-haired woman flying around the console while her dad stood in the doorway…_

_"Just jump!"_ _he shouted with his arms outstretched, "I'll catch you!"_

_Her ship lurched and she was thrown away from the hatch…_

"Jenny? Jenny, it's okay, you're safe now. It's okay, we've got you."

She breathed and focused. Never show weakness. They were memories; they could help her determine her situation. Don't get caught up in the emotion. She had to find her father. She forced herself to focus on the here and now, and she looked up to see that another woman was standing alongside Martha Jones. The second woman had dark blonde hair and she was wearing a sturdy black jumper with dark trousers. This woman was no doctor: everything about her screamed _defense._ Not quite military, but close. Jenny beat down a wave of kinship and stared at the woman with hard eyes.

The woman gently touched Jenny's hand, still limp from sedatives. "I'm Rose," she said. "Do you remember me?"

_"My name's Rose Tyler. We're going to help you, okay?"_

"You were in my ship," Jenny murmured. She tried to pull her hand away but the sedatives were still too strong.

Rose Tyler smiled brightly. "That's right, we found you in your ship. You were badly hurt. We thought we lost you for a moment, you almost flatlined on the way here. To Torchwood," she added this last bit quickly when Jenny's mouth twitched into a frown. "I'm one of the Assistant Directors here. Do you know what Torchwood is?"

She did. She didn't know very much about it, granted, but she was able to glean some information from various encyclopedias over the years. She'd asked her dad about it a couple of times, but he always avoided direct answers. He always did that. Maybe now he'd be able to help fill in the blanks. Or at least he would once they were together again. "Where's my father? What've you done with him?" Her voice was pathetically garbled. It was too early to determine whether or not Rose Tyler and Martha Jones were truly as harmless as they claimed to be, and she had to keep up a strong image. "Where is he?"

Rose Tyler frowned and Martha Jones's gaze flickered directly ahead. "You were alone in the ship," Rose said slowly. "There were no traces of life. No bodies, either."

"Not on my ship," Jenny said impatiently. _Damn sedatives._ "Did he crash, too?"

Rose shook her head. "Your ship was the only one we found, Jenny." _What?_ Well, that was good, then. It wouldn't do to have the TARDIS out of commission at the moment. Surely that meant Dad was on his way, or somewhere in the building already. Jenny didn't like it, but she knew when she was stuck. Not beaten, but definitely stuck. She'd need her dad to help her out of here, especially while her body was temporarily incapacitated.

Martha Jones glanced at Rose and lowered her voice. "He's outside."

Jenny knew she wasn't meant to hear these words, but her physiology was a bit stronger than the average human's and she could pick up on the whisper with ease. "Who?" she demanded, and turned her head in the direction Martha was staring at just a few moments ago. There was a decent-sized window about two meters away, and the glass was opaque, but she could make out a hazy outline of three individuals. By the looks of it, they were in the midst of a heated discussion.

"Oh no," Rose breathed, and suddenly Martha Jones was dashing across the room, wrenching open a nearby door and slamming it behind her. Moments later her blurry form appeared in the window.

"Who's outside?" Jenny demanded. She struggled to move her limbs and growled in frustration when they refused to cooperate.

"Jenny, I need to explain something to you," Rose said urgently. Faint shouts drifted through the window. "We think you might have come from a different universe. We've run some tests on you and your ship and you're covered in a sort of residual background radiation found in the void between universes. Do you know what that means?"

Jenny stared at her companion with a furrowed brow. What did she mean, another universe? Was that even possible? Did those even _exist_? No, it couldn't be. It definitely couldn't be. She'd have learned about them by now, if they truly existed. This must be a part of some kind of trap, or some silly way to goad her into trusting these Torchwood people. Her father didn't seem to think too highly of them. Perhaps he had good reason not to. Well, then she wasn't going to do so either, and she certainly wasn't going to trust them.

"I know it's a lot to handle, and I know you've been through a lot already, but we need you to tell us _exactly_ what you remember. Because if you are from another universe…" Rose's voice trailed off and she bit her lip. "We have someone here who can help. We think you know him already."

The shouting from outside was growing louder. One figure in the window—tall, male, dark hair, it looked like—was particularly animated and kept gesturing towards the window. Jenny grimaced. She needed to get out of here. She wouldn't be kept here like some kind of zoo exhibit. "Who is outside?" Jenny demanded again. She was pleased to find that her voice was slightly more intelligible, but she arranged her face into a blank slate.

"His name is John Smith," Rose answered, her gaze flickering between Jenny and the window. "But you'll probably know him as the Doctor."

The heart monitor temporarily spiked as Jenny took in this good news. Clearly these Torchwood people weren't particularly bright—how could they not know that the Doctor was her father at this point, if he was right outside? —but it was a comfort to know that her dad was here. Already things were much less complicated. _The sooner I can talk to Dad, the sooner I can get out of here,_ she thought, relaxing her muscles to bring down her heart rate. "I want to talk to him," she said, staring at Rose expectantly.

"There's more—" she and Jenny both jumped when a brief shout worked its way into the room. Rose bit her lip again and continued. "He's probably not the Doctor you know. If we're right about where you came from, then he's definitely not the same Doctor. He'd be a…well, he'll be a parallel version of the one you know."

"Parallel?" Jenny exclaimed. "What does that mean, _parallel_? What are you talking about?"

Rose looked like she wanted to speak, but someone was apparently signaling her from the other side of the door. "I promise, we'll explain everything as soon as we can. I'll be back in a minute, okay?" She jumped up and hurried out the door, closing it firmly behind her.

Jenny stared intently at the window. She was able to identify Rose and Martha through the glass, along with the tall dark-haired man, another balding man, and a shorter man with spiked hair. They were all engaged in a frenzied conversation, but Jenny couldn't make out any of it. Instead she decided to devote her attention to her body. Whatever sedative they'd given her wasn't very strong. She could already flex her fingers and toes, and it was getting easier to move her wrists. Although there was still a distinctly numb sensation in her body from the neck down, it was nice to move with a little more freedom.

Her right pinky brushed against a tiny remote, and Jenny awkwardly turned her head to see what it was. She squinted, dimly recognizing it from some obscure book on early human medical care. If she was correct, then the button would prop the bed into a sitting position. That was a good assumption. They wouldn't have left it within easy reach if it could potentially aid in escape. She fumbled for the remote and hesitantly pushed down on the button, startling when the mattress abruptly began to rise behind her. Within a moment she was sitting at a forty-five degree angle, and as soon as she was comfortable, she examined the remote. Normally she'd need a minute or so to analyze the mechanics involved, but maybe she'd be able to put this to good use if she really needed an emergency escape route. It was unlikely, given the fact that her father was so close by, but Jenny always needed a back-up plan. It was one of the many things hardwired into her brain at birth.

The shouting outside had completely disappeared and Jenny glanced at the window again. Martha Jones and the balding man were facing the glass and Jenny resisted the urge to sneer. _Stop staring at me!_ She wanted to shout. _I'm not some creature you can put on display!_ She seriously considered ripping off the heart monitors again, but decided to wait until her dad showed up.

At that moment, the door opened with a gentle creak. Rose stepped in first, offering a smile, but it didn't reach her eyes. Jenny's hands clenched into fists as she read Rose's body language. She was incredibly anxious. The tension was radiating off of her as she glanced over her shoulder. "The Doctor's right here. Do you want to talk to him now? We can wait if you're not ready."

Jenny blinked. Despite how incredibly uncomfortable Rose was, she somehow managed to keep her voice calm and gentle. How did she do that? _No matter. Talk to Dad and find out what's going on. Prime directive._ She folded her hands in her lap and hoped she looked stronger than the sedatives allowed. "No, I can talk to him."

Someone just outside of the door loudly exhaled. Rose stepped aside, glancing nervously behind her once again and murmuring something that Jenny didn't bother to catch. A tall, skinny, dark-haired man hesitantly stepped into the room. Jenny frowned as she studied him. Where was her dad? That wasn't her dad—

As soon as she recognized the man standing in the doorway, her brain completely shut down.

He tentatively entered the room, walking past Rose without a single glance in her direction. His mouth was slightly ajar as his dark eyes locked with Jenny's, staring at her as if he'd seen a ghost. There was some foreign emotion written all over his face that Jenny couldn't identify, and some instinct told her that she probably never would fully understand it. Whatever it was, it appeared to have robbed him of the ability to speak. He stopped a short distance away from her bed.

She stared at him just as intensely, her brain scrambling to make sense of this. She knew this man. She didn't know him well, but she would never forget his face. His was among the first she'd ever seen. His was the last she'd seen after being shot. For years that face had haunted her dreams, pushing her to be _better_ somehow, to prove that she wasn't just a soldier. She never expected to see that face again. And yet here he was. She was looking at her father, and at the same time she wasn't.

"Your bowtie is gone," she murmured as soon as she found herself capable of speech.

The Doctor—she couldn't wrap her mind around the thought of him being _her dad_—visibly swallowed. "You're alive."

_You're __**here**__,_ she wanted to say, but her vocal cords refused to cooperate.

He slowly shook his head. "You're _alive._ You're—" he ran a hand over his face, covering his mouth for a moment before he continued. "I saw you—you were shot…"

Jenny was dimly aware of Rose Tyler's presence in front of the door, but that was the very least of her concerns at the moment. She quickly ran through an array of scenarios in a desperate bid to make sense of this. _Time travel. I must have time traveled. That's why I crashed, because I didn't have a TARDIS and my ship couldn't handle the trip. But that's a paradox, I can't talk to him if he hasn't found me yet…!_ Her thoughts raced like a locomotive in danger of derailing. She never saw this version of her father after being shot. This was not _her_ father, not the one she traveled with. If she spoke to the man standing in front of her, surely that would cause some horrible paradox, wouldn't it?

She needed a way out. It was too late to avoid seeing him, but she absolutely would not give him any information that could change the future. She clenched her jaw as the Doctor stepped closer and refused to look him in the eye.

"Jenny, I..."

His voice sounded so very small, so horribly unlike the one she remembered from Messaline. Caught off guard, her gaze flickered upwards to meet his. He was right next to her bed now and his eyes were misty. He was not smiling. There was nothing in his face beyond sheer disbelief.

For a moment Jenny expected him to say something, but instead he cautiously extended a hand. She instinctively shied away and _oh no, no, no_, _why am I doing this?_ She swiped at her eyes. This was ridiculous; there was no reason to cry. She'd time traveled, that was all. It could be done again. She would see her dad—_her_ dad, not the virtual stranger who had left her behind on Messaline— again. So why was she crying?

The Doctor offered his hand again, and when Jenny didn't curl away from him, he gently touched her cheek and wiped at an escaping tear. _I shouldn't be crying,_ she thought, but somehow, as she stared at the Doctor's face, it seemed impossible not to. His face was so incredibly different from the one she was used to. And yet he looked exactly as _her_ dad did when they finally crossed paths again: his face was locked in that same expression of incredulity, but there were a myriad of emotions in his eyes.

The same man, but so extraordinarily different. She felt a childish pang of _I want __**my**_ _dad_ and suddenly the crying made a little more sense.

"You're _alive_," he said again, still holding her face in his hands. "I don't know how, but…This can't—it shouldn't be possible..."

The words came on their own accord. It was a phrase that her dad used so often around her, words that had come to encapsulate their relationship. She wondered where he could possibly be. "It's not impossible," Jenny said. "Just a bit unlikely."

The Doctor paused as a smile worked its way across face. He didn't say anything else, but he pulled Jenny into a hug that left her feeling crushed and cradled all at once.

* * *

**Author's Note:** **The Doctor and Jenny are finally reunited! Honestly, I can't believe I've gotten this far in the story and I want to thank everyone who has been following it. Please leave a review! As always, I'm completely open to constructive criticism. Thanks for reading!**


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: **Hello again, everyone! I am so sorry for how long it took to update this story. I was hit with a serious case of writer's block and it took me ages to put together a decent chapter. Thank you _so much_ to everyone who reviewed, followed or added this story to your favorites! I honestly never expected this kind of feedback and it all means so much to me. I hope the latest installment was worth the wait.

Special thanks to CoriOreo, who helped me get past the writer's block!

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Doctor Who or any related characters. Katherine and Miranda Smith belong to me.

* * *

Even though Jenny was stiff as a board in his arms, the Doctor didn't let her go. He didn't know how this was possible, and he knew that he should be very concerned about the potential collapse of the universe, but at that moment he honestly didn't care. All he knew was that his daughter was _alive_ in his arms, and that her two hearts were beating loudly on the monitor. He clung to the sound almost as much as he clung to Jenny, marveling at the fact that _this was real_. Only once before had he experienced this kind of bittersweet euphoria, and this time, mercifully, there were no Daleks around to ruin the moment.

Rose cleared her throat in the doorway, startling the Doctor back into reality. He reluctantly drew away from Jenny but couldn't bring himself to let her go completely. He grasped her arms and studied her face, cataloguing every detail: her long blonde hair, her dark blue eyes, the curve of her nose. He'd done his best to lock those features into the corner of his mind, along with those of her dead siblings. Now that he was looking at them again, it was overwhelming. But a good kind of overwhelming.

"You're alive," he said again. Oh, he loved the sound of that. _Jenny is alive_. _Jenny is here and she is alive._

The Doctor was suddenly aware of the grin on his face, especially now that it was fading. Jenny was _here_ and _alive_. Despite her earlier claim, this went beyond "just a bit unlikely." This was impossible of the highest order.

"How are you alive?" he asked, his voice at a slightly higher pitch than usual. "How did you get off Messaline? Did you even _leave_ Messaline? And you look the same—if you're alive, why haven't you regenerated?"

This last question earned a snort from Jenny. She stared at him incredulously. "I think I should be asking you the same thing."

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "What? What are you talking about?"

"Did I travel back in time or something? Is that what happened?" Jenny's eyes briefly flickered to Rose before returning to the Doctor. "I must have. You look completely different."

"Not exactly," Rose answered, abandoning her post in the corner to sit on the edge of Jenny's bed, adjacent to the Doctor. "You crashed into a parallel world, Jenny. It's similar to the one you came from, but not exactly the same. Does that make sense?"

"You said that already," Jenny said, a flare of impatience breaking through her stoic demeanor. "What does that mean, a _parallel world_? How did I get here?"

"Well…were sort of hoping you could tell us," the Doctor said. He anxiously pulled at his right ear, keeping one hand gently resting on Jenny's forearm. "How are you_ here_, Jenny? You died! You died _in my arms_!"

Jenny stared at him evenly, without a trace of emotion. "Only one of my hearts stopped. I was comatose, not dead. My heart repaired itself, I woke up, and you were gone."

The Doctor stared at her, gaping in shock. That was it? That was all she had to say about the fact that she _came back to life_? "What do you mean, your heart repaired itself? That's impossible! It doesn't work like that, you should have regenerated!"

"I wasn't quite fifteen hours old when I was shot," Jenny said shortly. "I've been told that you grew back a hand. Why can't I grow back a heart?"

The Doctor's single heart skipped a beat. _Oh,_ he thought incredulously. _She was never really dead at all._ He thought back to his last regeneration, out cold in Rose's flat on Christmas. He thought of his trusty right hand, severed by a Sycorax and regrown seconds later because he was still within the first fifteen hours of his regeneration cycle. This was beyond idiocy on his part. He wasn't even thinking on Messaline. _Of course_ she wasn't dead. She'd only thought she was dying because she didn't know any better. The whole time Jenny was perfectly fine…and he ran off in his TARDIS and never looked back.

Self-loathing gnawed at him from the inside out. "Jenny…" the Doctor whispered. "Jenny, I…I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry." It was painfully inadequate.

She blinked once. "I know." There was a beat of silence before she continued, "You never answered my question. How did I get here?"

The Doctor cleared his throat and sat up a little straighter. He wanted to properly apologize. He wanted to ask forgiveness, even though he didn't deserve it. But he did none of this. Instead, he asked monotonously, "How much do you remember before the crash?"

Jenny frowned and leaned back, her arm sliding out of the Doctor's grip. He resisted the urge to take her hand and ran his fingers through his hair just to keep them occupied. He had so much to stay that he couldn't figure out where to start, but he knew he needed to let Jenny talk. As difficult as it was, he held his tongue. Nearly a full minute passed before the silence was broken. "We were flying away from a planet," Jenny said slowly. She stared at her lap intently. "There was a creature there, attacking the planet. Dad got a distress call on the psychic paper."

_Dad._ The word was a swift punch in a gut. The Doctor swallowed and put on his best poker face. He couldn't dwell on that, not yet. As soon as he got the full story, he could dwell on it as much as he liked. He could ask her about her travels later. _Not now._

"They were taking the civilians. Apparently the civilians were a means of sustenance, or something," Jenny continued. "We didn't get to investigate them properly—it all happened so fast. But they were only taking children. That's how Dad got the distress call. A mother telepathically sent the message after her children were taken."

"What planet was it?" Rose asked.

Jenny raised her eyes, mouth open to speak, but she quickly clamped it shut with a look of alarm. The Doctor sat up again, watching her closely. What was wrong? Why did she stop speaking? He quickly scanned her over in search of some injury that the Torchwood medical staff might have overlooked. No, she looked perfectly fine. A glance at Jenny's heart monitor affirmed that both organs were fully functional.

"Jenny?" the Doctor said, reaching for her hand, but she began to speak before he could take it.

"They had orange skin," Jenny exclaimed as the heart monitor briefly accelerated. The words tumbled out of her mouth so quickly that even the Doctor struggled to keep up. "They were short with orange skin. The adults didn't even reach my waist. They were telepathic and their planet looked like a giant forest, but it didn't have any grass, and their sky was dark purple."

"They sound like Oompa Loompas," Rose murmured, shooting the Doctor a look of confusion. "We haven't encountered anyone like that in this universe."

The Doctor frowned and ran his hand through his hair again. "They sound like Chenteroi. Natives of Khrelir Four," he clarified, seeing Rose's look of confusion. "It's a small planet in the Triangulum Galaxy, fairly close to Earth—well, in our home universe, anyway. I'd have liked to take you there, Rose, the Chenteroi are a charming lot…Right, anyway," the Doctor said, turning back to his daughter. "Does that ring any bells, Jenny? Chenteroi, Khrelir Four…?"

She didn't look up from her lap, but she gave a small nod. "Yes, that sounds right. Khrelir Four. Right." Her voice was just shaky enough to be noticed. "We were flying away from Khrelir Four. The attacking creatures were after us…actually, they were after _me_. They didn't seem interested in the TARDIS at all."

The Doctor quietly inhaled at the mention of his beloved ship. After six years, his longing for the TARDIS had subdued to the point of tolerability. He always missed it, yes, but Rose and the kids were usually enough to compensate for its loss. Besides, it wasn't gone forever—in a few years he'd have another one. But for the first time in ages, he had news of _his_ TARDIS, the one still flying around in another universe with his Time Lord self at the helm. He wasn't quite sure what to make of that.

_Focus,_ he thought sharply. He forced himself to concentrate on Jenny. The knowledge of her existence in this universe was every bit as daunting as the knowledge of his TARDIS, but at least the former was manageable. _Focus on the matter at hand. _Well, there were several aspects of Jenny's story that already didn't make sense. Best to tackle those first.

"Rose told me about your ship," the Doctor said, with a brief glance at Rose. "I didn't actually see it for myself, but I can guarantee that it's not Chenteroi. By the sixty-first century they'd have just barely figured out how to use petrol, they couldn't have possibly built it. Where did it come from? Why weren't you in the TARDIS?"

Jenny visibly relaxed and held her head high. "I stole it from Messaline," she answered confidently.

The Doctor opened his mouth to speak, but a quiet chuckle from Rose interrupted him. "What?" he said, turning to Rose with narrowed eyes.

Rose shook her head and smiled. "She stole her ship," she said. "My god, she is _so_ your daughter."

The Doctor felt a pang in his single heart as his face split into a grin. _She is _so_ your daughter_. Oh, he would never get tired of this. It was akin to hearing others discussing the strong resemblance between he and Katherine, or noticing a light smatter of freckles across Miranda's nose, not unlike his own. But this time, it was different. He never really got the chance to hear those things about Jenny. Sure, Donna had mentioned their similar physiologies, but that was so impersonal.

But to hear someone refer to Jenny as his daughter, to know that she had somehow taken after him…well. That was just incredible.

His thoughts came to a screeching halt when he turned back to Jenny. Her impassive expression had returned and her body was rigid. The Doctor could feel the grin fading from his own face. Clearly she wasn't entirely pleased with the comparison, but why? She had been asking for him, hadn't she? No, she wanted the _other _him, the Time Lord him. Perhaps…perhaps his other self had undergone a drastic change. The Doctor knew that his Time Lord self had regenerated years ago (he quickly pushed away those thoughts—now was absolutely _not_ the time to revisit that awful occasion), but maybe that man had changed more than just his face. Maybe they were two completely different people now. Maybe Jenny didn't even recognize him. But what had happened? Why wouldn't Jenny be happy with the similarity? She seemed so happy to be with him on Messaline…

Rose must have noticed their mutual discomfort. She asked the next question with an unusually calm demeanor, not unlike the one she used when breaking up a squabble between Katherine and Tony. "Why weren't you in the TARDIS, Jenny? Why keep your ship if you were traveling with your dad?"

Jenny sized them both up. After a moment's hesitation she responded, "I wasn't ready to give it up. We agreed that we would leave it behind as soon as we found a planet that could put it to good use, and I would go with my dad in the TARDIS."

"So you just followed the TARDIS in your ship?" the Doctor exclaimed. "How did you manage that? You can't fly through the time vortex like that!"

"Dad found a way," Jenny said in a clipped tone.

"How?" the Doctor pressed.

Jenny regarded he and Rose for a moment before glancing up at the heart monitor. She said nothing.

"All right then, so, back to Khrelir Four…" the Doctor said slowly. "What was chasing you? _Why_ were they chasing you? Did they cause all of this?"

Jenny folded her arms and glanced back at the heart monitor.

"You're done talking now, aren't you?" the Doctor said. He ignored his brewing sense of disappointment.

This time Jenny did not turn away from him, but her eyes flickered from his face, to the heart monitor, and back again.

The Doctor exhaled heavily and shifted his weight. "All right, if that's what you want. Rose?" he looked to her for a second opinion.

Rose nodded. "I don't see why not. Just let me find Martha and she'll disconnect the monitor, yeah?" She climbed off the hospital bed and jogged out of the room.

Once the door swung closed with a small electronic ping, the room was unnaturally quiet. The heart monitor's steady beep was a small comfort, but there was a certain level of awkwardness now that Rose was not there to be a conduit. The Doctor sat uncomfortably on the edge of the bed, torn between the urge to envelop Jenny in another hug and the urge to break the silence.

Naturally, his gob won out in the end.

"So, what's he like, the Parallel Me? Do I really wear a bowtie now? Oh, I hope I misheard you there, I had a bowtie phase once when I was younger, a _lot_ younger, and I was a crotchety old man back then…well, I guess you could still say I'm pretty old, but hey! At least I look pretty good for my age, now. You know, according to my papers here, I'm only thirty-eight!" He barked out a laugh. "Imagine: me, thirty-eight years old. Now that, _that_ is young. I'm practically a kid all over again! You never really do get used to it, all those changing faces, looking like an old man when you're in the prime of your life and looking like a kid when you're nine hundred. I mean, look at you—you were born looking, what, sixteen, seventeen? I'd put you at seventeen if I didn't know any better. But you're really…wait, how old _are_ you, Jenny? How much time has passed in the other universe? You're staring at me."

Throughout his whole monologue, Jenny's eyebrows had been steadily creeping closer and closer to her hairline. Now she was staring at him with wide eyes.

"What, what is it?" the Doctor said. He looked to the right, checking to see if anyone was looking through the window. There was a blurry outline of Pete Tyler, but he was too far away to be watching them. "Something wrong?"

The corners of Jenny's mouth twitched upward.

"Is that a smile?" the Doctor tried. Excitement was building in his chest.

Jenny narrowed her eyes and turned to the heart monitor. Her lips were pursed now.

"You smiled," the Doctor said. He was no stranger to déjà vu, but the parallel was not lost on him. He'd had this exact conversation with Rose all those years ago, when he regenerated after leaving the Game Station. "I saw you smile."

This time she didn't look at him. She somehow managed to fold her arms even more tightly than before and she stared intently into her lap. The Doctor sighed and anxiously fidgeted. It was clear that she wasn't going to interact with anyone until the heart monitor was off. He stared at the door in the corner, willing Rose and Martha to appear in order to get the bloody thing off. The sooner that happened, the better.

* * *

Rose found Martha several minutes later in the intensive care ward of the Torchwood medical facility. The place was busier than usual, with several earthquake victims being airlifted in from all over the city, as well as Glasgow and Cardiff. So far the number of injuries extraterrestrial in nature were surprisingly low, but according to Martha, they liked to look over anyone with even the faintest trace of alien contact just to be safe.

"Martha," Rose said, once she finally navigated through the crowd and made it safely to the nurse's station, where Martha was speaking with an intern. "Martha, sorry, but the Doctor and I need you. Have you got a minute?"

Martha glanced up with a fleeting smile. "Take this to Dr. Williams," she said to the intern, handing her a clipboard. Once the intern was on her way, Martha turned to face Rose. "Everything okay?"

Rose quickly checked to make sure that nobody was listening. At the moment, fourteen people in the entire universe knew of Jenny's existence, and she wasn't going to let some eavesdropper change that status before the press conference scheduled for tonight. Once sure that the coast was clear, Rose began to walk away and gestured for Martha to follow. "Jenny's refusing to talk until we take her heart monitor off," Rose said when they reached an empty hallway. "Could you do that?"

Martha raised her eyebrows. "I wouldn't. We almost lost her in the helicopter. I don't know if her hearts are stable yet, and I definitely don't want to let her go before I figure out how her binary cardiovascular system works."

"I think she has a problem with that," Rose said. "When the Doctor and I were traveling, back in our home universe, we got captured. A lot. And whenever that happened, the Doctor never liked it when someone tried to work out his physiology. I have a feeling Jenny has the same issue. She won't tell us anything if she's attached to the monitor."

She turned to Martha and saw that she was deep in thought. Despite the maddening circumstances, Rose was grateful. She couldn't blame Martha for wanting to study Gallifreyan biology in closer detail. For years, healthcare for the Doctor and their children was essentially a glorified guessing game. Martha was the only physician they trusted with the Doctor's unique biology and medical records, and she'd been Katherine and Miranda's pediatrician for the same reason. But nobody knew for sure how their bodies would react to various medications, or how their bodies would even function in the long run. Until now, the Doctor's memories and half-Gallifreyan DNA were all they had to go on. And now they had Jenny, the first known Gallifreyan in this universe. She was the best chance they had at giving the Doctor and the girls a complete medical background of sorts.

But as much as they needed this information, Rose was more than willing to wait. Taking notes on Jenny's physiology would do nothing to win her trust, and at the moment, her trust was a little more important than her hearts.

They rounded a corner and entered the isolated care facility, where living extraterrestrials were treated upon their arrival to the planet (or eventual discovery, whichever came first). Martha hesitated before speaking. "I'll take her off the monitor for now, but I do want to examine her more closely as soon as she's willing. If something happens I want to know how to treat her."

"Thanks," Rose said with a smile as they passed through a set of doors. Halfway down the corridor, Pete was keeping watch over Jenny's room, and he had company.

Rose had just enough time to stop and process what was happening before a small child ran full-force her knees. "Mummy!" Katherine shouted, wrapping her skinny arms around Rose's leg. "Mummy, you're here! You're here!"

Rose heavily exhaled as she scooped Katherine into her arms. She'd known for hours that the kids were safe, but having them physically present was an unexpected relief. She stood back up and hugged Katherine as tightly as she dared, breathing in the scent of shampoo and freshly cut grass. _She was playing outside,_ Rose realized with a start. Just this morning, Katherine was playing outside while the world was on the brink of collapse. She thought back to the episode in the storage unit, when the canon malfunctioned. She'd been so close to falling into the Void, so close to never seeing this little girl again…and at the exact same time, Katherine was playing. Rose didn't know why the juxtaposition unsettled her so much. All she knew was that it hit her like a ton of bricks, and suddenly she never wanted to let Katherine go. "I'm here," she affirmed quietly, pressing a kiss into Katherine's thick brown hair. "I'm here. Oh, I missed you…"

"Mummy, everything shaked!" Katherine squealed, completely oblivious. Her tiny hands flew about as she spoke. "Everything shaked and things got broke at Nana's house! An' Nana was real scared an' made me go under the door, an' 'Randa was crying so loud she broke my ears! But I wasn't scared. 'Cause I'm a big girl an' big girls don't get scared, right?"

Rose grinned and gave her another squeeze. She felt Katherine reflexively melt into the hug and stroked her hair. _I missed you, I missed you, I missed you,_ she thought. Better try to make up for lost time. With everything that happened today, she couldn't have afforded to stop and truly think about the kids. At the moment she wasn't capable of doing anything else. "You," Rose said, accentuating the word with a kiss, "are a _very_ brave girl."

"I know," Katherine said nonchalantly.

Still clutching her daughter, Rose looked ahead. Martha had disappeared into the room, and through the window Rose could see her and the Doctor removing the heart monitor from Jenny's chest.

Rose glanced down at Katherine (who was now chattering away about broken dishes) and back at Jenny. For the first time it occurred to her that she was a stepmother…sort of. So what did that make Jenny to the girls? Sisters? Half-sisters? Somehow Rose doubted there was a term that could comfortably define their relationship.

Fortunately she didn't have to dwell on that for long. Jackie Tyler was making her way towards Rose, and she didn't look happy.

"Of all days for you to leave me babysitting," Jackie said impatiently. Miranda was quietly gurgling in her arms, wrapped in a purple blanket. "He drops the kids off, and two hours later there's a bloody earthquake! I'm left with two screaming kids, a son in school all the way across the city, and a daughter who can't give me more than two minutes on the phone to let me know she's all right!"

"I wasn't screaming! I only screamed, 'cause 'Randa screamed!" Katherine exclaimed, whirling around indignantly.

"I was suiting up to go to Cardiff, Mum!" Rose said. "I couldn't be on the phone for any longer than that!"

Jackie shifted the baby to her shoulder and made a face. "Well, excuse me for wanting to know whether or not you were blown up in the earthquake. Meanwhile I had to drive all over London trying to find a road that wasn't torn to bits. Between picking up Tony—" she nodded over her shoulder towards nine-year-old Tony, who was laying on the floor playing with a tablet computer, "—and getting all the way here, I was in the car for almost three hours! And then I find out you and your husband are babysitting some alien that crashed in Cardiff!"

"Aliens?!" Katherine craned her neck to look in every possible direction. "You got aliens, Mummy? I wanna see aliens!"

"Katherine, go play with Tony for a bit, yeah?" Rose said absently, setting Katherine back on the ground.

"I wanna see aliens!"

"Go play with Tony," Rose repeated firmly. Once Katherine was (sulkily) seated down the hall with the tablet computer, Rose turned to face her mother. "Mum, I'm sorry, okay? None of this was our fault. We didn't expect _any _of this."

Jackie frowned. "Well, I'm glad you're all safe. That's what matters." She paused to bounce Miranda, whose gurgles were starting to sound suspiciously like cries. "So what's all this I'm hearing about an alien? Your father said that was that girl in the window. What is she? She looks human enough."

"Here, I'll take her," Rose murmured, reaching over and taking Miranda into her arms. She shifted the baby to her shoulder and kissed her fuzzy little head, gently rocking. _I missed you, I missed you, I missed you._ "You're probably hungry, aren't you? It's been a while since you ate."

With Jackie trailing behind her, Rose turned and rounded the nearest corner. They entered a different corridor, which was completely deserted but still within earshot of their family. Rose walked down the fluorescent hall in silence until she located a small bench. It wouldn't be the most comfortable thing in the world, but it would work for now. She settled into the bench cushion and, with Jackie acting as a privacy screen, singlehandedly unbuttoned her blouse. After a moment of expert maneuvering, Rose latched Miranda onto her breast and leaned against the wall. Nobody spoke; the silence was only broken by Miranda's quiet suckling and the occasional hiccup.

_I missed you, I missed you, I missed you,_ Rose thought. She took Miranda's tiny wrinkled hand and kissed it.

"What's happening, sweetheart?" Jackie asked quietly.

Rose sighed and rested her head on the wall, looking up at her mother. "The girl's name is Jenny. We found her in the wreckage of a spaceship in Cardiff this morning."

"So she's not human," Jackie said warily. She sat down on the bench.

Rose slowly ran her thumb over Miranda's head, which was just starting to sprout golden peach fuzz. "She's a Time Lord, Mum. She's the Doctor's daughter, from our home universe. It's a long story—"

But Jackie had evidently stopped listening. Her eyes were wide with anger. "What the hell do you mean, she's his daughter? With _who_? She's got to be, what, sixteen? All this time he had a daughter and he never bothered to tell us?!"

The outburst had startled Miranda; she let go of Rose's breast and began to cry. "Shh, shh, it's all right," Rose cooed, gently guiding Miranda back to the nipple. Once reattached, she immediately quieted and went back to suckling. _Really, Mum, can't you just _listen_ for once?_ Rose thought angrily. Just once it would be nice to fully explain something before Jackie prematurely chimed in. "Jenny was born _after_ we got stuck here, _after_ Canary Wharf. She was born out of a cloning machine, or something, but there was an accident and up until now the Doctor thought she was dead."

It was a tremendously abbreviated version of what really happened, but Rose was too tired and too irritated to go into detail. Besides, it wasn't her story to tell. She was the only one who knew about the Doctor's dead children, and the Doctor would probably prefer to keep it that way. If Jackie wanted more information…well, she'd have to go to the Doctor.

Rose closed her eyes and prepared herself for the inevitable onslaught of questions, but there was only silence. Well. Today was full of surprises, wasn't it? She cautiously glanced at her mother. Jackie was staring at Rose with disbelieving eyes, mouth opening to speak, but she was interrupted by echoing footsteps down the corridor. Both turned to see Katherine running towards them with Pete watching from the end of the hall.

"I found you!" Katherine said, skidding to a halt between Rose and Jackie. She curiously peeked at Miranda, but got bored and leaned on Jackie's lap. "Grandpa says we're goin' someplace else now, 'cause Daddy's friend gotta take a test with Dr. Martha. Is Dr. Martha gonna give her a shot?"

"Who's Daddy's friend, sweetheart?" Jackie asked, standing up and giving Pete a questioning stare.

"_Jenny_," Katherine said impatiently, as if this was common knowledge. Well, that temporarily resolved the issue around their relationship, then. Until further notice, it seemed that Jenny would simply be "Daddy's friend." Rose sat up straighter as Katherine continued speaking. "Daddy an' Jenny went with Dr. Martha, 'cause Jenny's gotta take a test, an' Grandpa says we gotta go with them. But I don't wanna go. Can I see the aliens now? Wanna talk to aliens, Mummy."

Test? What kind of test? Had something gone wrong? Rose carefully removed Miranda from her breast, murmuring apologies when she cried in protest. She hastily buttoned her blouse and stood up, using one hand to cradle Miranda and taking Katherine's hand with the other. "No, I think we have to go follow Daddy and Grandpa," she said, leading her mother and children down the hallway as quickly as she could.

What sort of test could they possibly need? They'd done everything they could as soon as Jenny arrived; as far as they could tell, she was perfectly healthy. Had something come up? Nothing could go wrong, if something happened to Jenny…what would happen to the Doctor, then? He wouldn't take it well. He might not be able to take it at all. He'd lost too many children before, if something happened to Jenny _now…_

_Calm down,_ Rose thought sharply as they joined her father at the end of the corridor. _It can't be too serious. Dad sent Katherine to tell us, it can't be too urgent if he didn't tell us himself._ Still, the sooner she figured out what was going on, the better.

* * *

**_Earlier that day..._**

It was nearing ten o'clock in the morning, and nine-year-old Tom MacDonald was riding his skateboard through the suburbs of Glasgow. School was out for the day on account of parent-teacher conferences, and he wanted to finally show Jack the new board he'd gotten for his birthday. It was red and yellow and faster than anything Tom had ever ridden before, and certainly the best gift he'd gotten all year.

It would be nice to finally have a skateboard. For a long time he thought he'd never get one and that the guys would all leave him behind like always, but now he had a skateboard just like them. Except his was faster and definitely a lot cooler. His mum had made a big fuss about it and kept nagging him to wear a helmet, but Tom didn't care. He wasn't going to wear a stupid helmet when he showed off his brand-new board to his mates.

Without any warning, Tom was thrown from his skateboard and landed flat on his face. It came out of nowhere. Suddenly everything was violently shaking. _The ground was shaking_. Car horns erupted left and right, and glass was breaking everywhere, and house alarms were screeching, and crashes were heard in every possible direction. Tom didn't know what was going on, but he knew that he was bloody well scared, and he covered his head the best he could. Something could fall on his head at any second, maybe a brick or an anvil like in those stupid cartoons his brother watched. Maybe it would fall on him and crush his skull, and the very thought of it made Tom's heart skip a beat. For once, he thought his mum was right about wearing a helmet.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried not to cry, because his dad said that men didn't cry, but he was so scared and he _just wanted his mum_ even though he'd never say that again in his life, but it was true and _let me live, God, please let me live let me live let me live._

And suddenly, it all stopped. The shaking came to an abrupt halt, and there was a curious silence behind all of the sirens. Tom slowly lifted his head and looked around. Broken glass was all over the road and the windshield of a nearby car was cracked like a spider-web. _What was that?_ Tom thought. His heart was beating at a million miles per hour, thumping painfully against his ribs. He carefully climbed to his feet and examined his surroundings. There was nobody on the street, but he could hear people rummaging around in their houses, throwing open windows and screaming for someone to dial 999. He clutched at his curly red hair and stared in bewilderment. He'd just survived a bloody earthquake! Now, _that_ would make a good story for his friends.

Tom breathed deeply dropped his hands. He wondered if his mum and brother were all right. He definitely ought to check on them, first. Besides, his mum would be _furious_ if he didn't tell her that everything was fine. With a sigh and another look around, Tom picked up his skateboard and ran back the way he came.

A shadow fell over the street, and Tom looked up. Perhaps it was a rescue zeppelin from the city. But to his surprise, the sky was totally clear. Not a cloud in sight, as if there'd never been an earthquake. Nothing that could cause a shadow. Tom looked at the dark ground and back at the sky. A low-pitched hum worked its way through his ears all the way down to his toes, and his body felt all prickly and tingly, as if somebody had stuck him full of pins and jolted him with electricity at the same time.

His gut twisted and he broke into a run. As soon as he went home and found his mum, everything would be all right. Everything would be all right as soon as he found his mum. _Everything would be all right._

He ran for about twenty seconds before he vanished from sight. His skateboard fell to the ground with a clatter, lost amongst the debris from the earthquake. Tom MacDonald, nine years old, was never seen again.

* * *

**Author's Note:** I had a _very_ hard time putting this chapter together, and I definitely feel like it's not quite up to par. I would love to hear ANY constructive criticism you may have! Reviews keep me motivated to write!


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